Silhouettes: A James Bond Story
by Komodo13
Summary: After a beautiful MI6 agent goes rogue in Kuala Lumpur and creates an international incident, James Bond is sent to capture or eliminate her in order to avoid a war between India and Pakistan. But as he pursues her through Southeast Asia, he discovers there is much more to the situation than meets the eye, and comes face-to-face with an old enemy...


Prologue

 **Kuala Lumpur**

James Bond kicked open the metal fire door that secured the stairway and swept the landing with his Walther PPK/s, looking over the sights for any sign of a threat. There were none. Although the low-rent apartment building throbbed and pulsed with life, this small stretch of hallway was dead quiet. The running, laughing, wailing children with their exasperated parents chasing behind them, the loud drunken arguments or shouted greetings; all of the usual chaos of life in an overcrowded, poorly-maintained Southeast Asian slum building seemed to be taking place everyplace except here. It's absence caused the hair on the back of Bond's neck to rise.

The safe-house's door was almost directly across from the emergency stairs—that was just good protocol—and Bond stormed to the doorway, letting his momentum and power build, knowing that speed and force would be his only advantages if any surveillance had picked him up. He tossed a handful of concussions charges molded to look like Malaysian coins at the doorknob and turned his head away from the blast. In the enclosed hallway, it was loud enough to leave his ears ringing. Whatever element of surprise he'd had was just lost, but he knew that the lock, hinges and frame would be reinforced.

Bond put all the power he had into a kick, and felt the door give way. He stormed the apartment, found himself in a sparsely-furnished common area. He flowed, tactically, keeping the gun at high ready, following the swiveling of his head as he scanned his surroundings.

The woman was in a low crouch near the center of the room. She was more beautiful than the pictures in her dossier—life giving her beauty a realness that photos could never capture. The thin, linen slacks and white tank-top she wore accentuated the generous curves of her hips, and the immodest swell of her breasts. Her brownish-black hair was tied back, but sweat-sparkled ringlets stuck to her forehead, and an azure crystal pendant hung in a choker around her long neck. Her eyes were deepest brown he'd ever seen.

She had a polymer sub-compact automatic leveled at him, and his PPK/s was pointed at her.

"Agent Manyam," he said.

"So," she replied, "you are the one they sent."

They both fired.

1.

At the time it began-when the flash-traffic reports came in from Kuala Lumpur station, through the massive information clearing-house embedded in the American Embassy in Afghanistan which sucked up signal information like the baleen-lined jaws of a whale, and then shot directly to London—when the writhing jumble of contradictory and semi-accurate reports finally smoothed and coalesced into a coherent story and the alarm bells went off at the highest level of Her Majesty's government, James Bond was abjectly regarding the sapphire-blue face of his Omega DeVille and mulling whether he wanted to end the evening by getting drunk or sleeping with the woman at the baccarat table.

The slashing lines of the Omega's hands told him that it was nearly eleven o'clock, and while Le Cercle casino was barely hitting its stride—even on a Tuesday night—Bond was already bored. He'd already won three hands at Texas Hold'em, and then promptly lost a chunk of his winnings at the roulette wheel, and neither of fortune's swings had brought him much excitement. Hence his next set of options: alcohol or sex.

She certainly had the air of someone who was inclined toward a reckless act every now and then. The way her cold, blue eyes swept the table, and the slightly dismissive purse to her plump, red lips standing in contrast to the immaculately high, twisting coif of glossy, black hair gave Bond the distinct impression of the type of boredom unique to the idle rich. She had an exquisitely aquiline nose, and a matching cleft chin, which stood as testament to high breeding, which was already readily evident in the manner in which she deigned not notice the effect her shoulderless chiffon wrap was having on the men around her, gathering close, pretending to be transfixed by the bets she played.

Bond sat in for a few rounds; betting on her, just to see what would happen. The woman played the game recklessly, pulling her bets off the banker prematurely, betting on the tie, and then riding the player long past the point of prudence. Money, it seemed, was not something she was deeply concerned with. Only when Bond followed her lead, and put the remainder of his poker winnings on the tie, and then, to a low chorus of chortles and cheers from the assembled admirers flanking her, watched the bet improbably pay out did she deign to make eye-contact.

"I admire your courage," Bond told her across the smoky table. Le Cercle had steadfastedly resisted any prohibitions on tobacco use, and the air between them was begging grow gray.

"I admire your luck, Mr…?"

Before he could answer, Bond felt a light touch on his shoulder and one of the concierges whispered in his ear, "Phone call, Monsieur."

Bond stood. "I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me," he said, trying to tamp down the tightness working its way into his voice. He did not receive phone calls to this place except under extraordinary circumstances, and already he felt a crackle of electricity beneath his skin.

"Such a pity. We were just getting off to a lovely start," the woman said, a subtle taunt in her voice daring him to be reckless, ignore the call, and join her.

"And I'm sure it will be equally lovely ending someday," Bond replied, collecting his chips. "Good evening." He left there amid the hushed mutterings of her many admirers, with her money, games, and boredom.

2

The video was surprisingly clear for what must certainly have been a rush job on the part of the CIA. The angle was poor (M had explained that they'd had to conceal it in a particularly garish chandelier), but the details were quite sharp. Sharp enough, anyway, to convey the sudden shock on the faces of the Pakistani Foreign Minister's two minders when the beautiful woman he'd let into his suite exploded into a sudden, controlled frenzy, pulling a slim, dark knife from her hair and stabbing it into the left one's inner thigh and then the right one's throat.

"Femoral and carotid arteries," Bond noted. M made an approving noise.

The woman then flung herself and desperately-retreating FM, a slight man in a baggy, double-breasted suit, and tackled him to the ground. The two wrestled a bit, but the FM was clearly at a disadvantage, and was soon overpowered by sheer skill and what looked to be raw adrenaline. The woman pivoted, the slit red sheath dress she wore sliding immodestly up to her hips, and then, using all the power in her lower body, he twisted the FM's oblong head between her thighs until it visibly popped from the spinal column. Even without an audio feed, Bond thought he could hear the distinctive crunch.

"And there we have it," M said testily as he keyed the monitor controls on his desk.. "Whatever tenuous diplomatic relationship that existed between The UK and Pakistan just got tossed in the bin and started on fire."

"What do the Pakistani's know?" Bond asked, shifting in his leather chair, and rolling his shoulders inside the tuxedo jacket. It had been bespoke shortly after his return from a self-imposed sabbatical in Turkey, when he had still been physically and emotionally diminished, and it rode him tightly now, like a bad intuition he couldn't shake.

"Thanks to this," M hit a few more keys on his small wireless keyboard, "the whole world knows everything."

The scene on the monitor shifted from the CIA surveillance camera to a YouTube video. A woman's face and the graceful slope of her cleavage filled the frame, and Bond felt a sharp swell of raw lust. She'd been beautiful in the CIA video, but here, with the clarity and immediacy of a laptop's camera, he could see she was downright stunning. Indian and colonial bloodlines warred in her features, and her onyx eyes burned as she addressed the camera. "My name is Indira Manyam," she said angrily. "I am employed by British Secret Service. For the past two years I have worked undercover as a junior political attaché at the British embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, going by the name Christine D'Souza. Tonight," and she gave the date, "I murdered Irfan Muqam, Foreign Minister of Pakistan. I did so in his room in the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Kuala Lumpur, where he was attending a regional conference on combatting terrorism in South Asia and Southeast Asia." She sneered. "Such an irony. In fact, British Intelligence has long suspected that Muqam has provided funding, intelligence, and protection to various terrorist groups in order to protect his political position and his life."

Abruptly, the image changed to a still photo of Mumbai's Taj Hotel bathed in orange and yellow light and backlit with flames. It was an image that was familiar to any and all in the intelligence and security community. "But most despicable is Muqam's assistance and direct involvement in the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in 2008. While, our respective governments have danced around or simply elided the truth, the intelligence services of most Western countries have amble evidence that Muqam assisted Lashkar-e-Taiba in their cowardly slaughter of over one-hundred and sixty men, women, and children."

The woman's face was back onscreen now, the dark eyes wet, but still fierce.

"Including my uncle and aunt."

"Oh, bloody hell," Bond whispered.

M stopped the video. "Bloody hell's right. Not only did she murder a foreign diplomat; not only did she blow up our Malaysia operation; and not only did she elevate innuendo and suspicion to known fact, but she did so on a personal vendetta." M's face was pinched with a rage so barely-controlled that Bond felt as if it was disturbing the air of the room itself, like a high-pressure system presaging a storm. "We'd be the laughingstock of the intelligence community if they weren't too busy preparing for a war between India and Pakistan, which seems nigh-inevitable at this point." He killed the video and handed over a black dossier.

"Here's the silly bitch's CV. Study it, Double-Oh Seven. You're now responsible for her."

Bond idly flipped the file open. Customarily there was a recent photo stapled to the inside cover's top left corner. In it, Agent Manyam stood before a solid blue background with a neutral expression on her face, and yet Bond could still catch a hint of sex and sensuality in the gaze.

"Good fitness evaluations," Bond commented as he skimmed the top page. "Some impressive decoration here…nothing to indicate she might go solo." A bold-faced line caught his eye. Bond read the paragraph, then read it again. "She applied for double-oh status?" He looked over the file at M, who barely nodded his leonine head.

"She did, and was washed out of the program. Failed the medical evaluation. Something about a heart murmur."

"Do you think that's what set this off?" Bond asked. "A chance to live out her double-oh fantasies and to avenge her family all in one fell swoop?"

"It's plausible," M said. "It's also immaterial." He leaned over the great, polished mahogany slab of his desk. "We need to control this situation immediately, Double-Oh Seven, and we can't do that with her still in the winds of Southeast Asia. Hunt her down, run her to ground, and bring her in."

"Because a public flogging will reassure the world she acted alone."

"Exactly," M said.

"And if she doesn't come willingly? What kind of assets will I have for a forcible rendition?"

"None," M answered coldly. Bond gave him a quizzical look.

"If she doesn't come willingly, put a bullet in her head."

The room immediately went to ice. Bond blinked, trying to comprehend the order he'd just received. "We would terminate…"

"It wouldn't play on the world stage," M said slowly, deliberately, "but the Pakistani ISI will understand the message: we clean up after our own. That might— _might_ —alleviate enough tension to make this situation manageable."

"Manageable," Bond nodded, leaving an invisible comma of disdain in the air. M didn't miss it, and his face tightened by a magnitude until it was barely more than a mask of pure, contained fury.

"Listen to me… _very…carefully_ , Double-Oh Seven," he ordered, his voice something between a whisper and a hiss. "I don't owe you a bloody thing. Is that understood? You are my tool, my object, my piece of equipment issued to me to effect my work for Her Majesty's government. In the coldest equations of government service, you are a fountain pen. Is that understood?

"But since I choose to believe that we are more than that, and since I choose to believe that honor, loyalty, and duty have meaning and value in defining a man, I will tell you this…" He leaned back in his chair, far enough for the springs and castors to creak through the heavy leather, and his eyes went somewhere else-the inside of a concrete warren, perhaps, or a cheaply-assembled apartment house, leaking cold Belfast rain through its various cracks and ruptures.

"I know very well what it is to have nothing to hold on to but your flag and the faith that the men and women who serve beneath it, and I know what it's like when that faith is the only thin sliver of light you see when you wake up in the morning, every morning. That faith can sustain a man. It can keep him pushing through to the next moment, and the next, until the moment he returns home. Make no mistake, Double-Oh Seven, I am aware of the depths and blackness of the betrayal that we are committing with this operation. But above all else, we serve Her Majesty's government, and right now—at this moment of the night—that government requires us to turn on one of our own, put aside our personal notions of honor, and prevent a damnable bloodbath.

"Are we clear, Bond?" M's eyes drilled into him, pulled from the memory of captivity and torture.

"Absolutely, sir."

"Right," M, said. "Now check in with the Quartermaster for your field kit. Time is not our ally in this affair."

3

The sight of the young Quartermater fussing about in his workshop in the dead hours of the night would have been noteworthy if he didn't look similarly disheveled on any given day. It was only the comically large bottle of Mountain Dew wedged between a half-disassembled radio repeater and a Sterling submachine gun that indicated this visit was anything other than normal.

"Well," Q said with no small amount of peevishness, "at least one of us dressed in our eveningwear. Your life must be even more charmed than I suspected, Double-Oh Seven."

"I'm sure M greatly regrets pulling you away from…" Bond let his gaze slide over Q's fraying sweater and rumpled slacks, "whatever it was you were doing tonight, Q. Please don't take that as an invitation to share it with me."

"I highly doubt you'd be interested in hearing about my podcast, anyway." The wiry Quartermaster opened a large padded field kit. "Your equipment. I'm sorry this had to be assembled in such a rush. If I'd been given more lead time I could have put together a proper field package, but I suppose this will have to do."

"Well, no one wants to travel heavily when they're trying to avert a war."

"Yes," Q said, stiffly, clearly taken off guard by the mention of war. Bond wondered how much he'd been read in on the emerging situation or if it had been kept secret even from him. "Well, I suppose we'll just stick with the standard tools, shall we?" He handed Bond a small plastic box.

"Compact concussion charges, pressed to look like ordinary coins. The yield varies by size, but the largest ones are approximately comparable to half the impact of a standard flash-bang. The charges are held in a polymer matrix, so EOD dogs won't hit on them. Itemizers won't either."

Bond looked over the dozen or so coins in the box. "Very inconspicuous," he said admiringly.

"Yes, since he world has yet to embrace a cashless economy." Q sounded personally offended by the fact. "Do be careful with them. They're impact-triggered, so a drop from, say, a half-meter will set them off. Makes them easier to deploy."

"And they're even Malaysian ringgits," Bond noted.

"Naturally," Q said. "We've got them in over a hundred different currencies in the back."

"Is this what you do in your down periods? Collect currencies of the world to make into explosives? "

"We mostly put the interns on that," Q said. "Now, your watch," he handed Bond a heavy Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean with a black NATO strap. "I'm afraid we didn't have time to customize that for your mission, but it does still has the standard radio transponder built in. Just twist the bezel 90 degrees clockwise to activate. The satellites should be able to pick up the signal, provided you're not in a faraday cage or the belly of a volcano or the like."

"In which case I would probably have more pressing concerns than the satellites," Bond remarked dryly. "I assume it has the standard explosive charge as well?"

"Actually, it doesn't."

Bond raised an eyebrow.

"Procurement put a stop to that. Threw a fuss about blowing up luxury watches and all that."

"Please tell me you're joking."

"You've still got the coins," Q protested defensively.

Bond sighed and slid the watch into his hip pocket and felt its weight pull at the fabric of his trousers. "What else do we have?"

"Bluetooth earbuds," Q said with no small amount of excitement, holding out a white, plastic case. Bond took it from him.

"So I can listen to your podcast on the flight to Malaysia, I assume?"

Q gave him a withering look. "I doubt you're a fan of _Legion_. No, these are actually highly-sensitive directional microphones. Simply touch the sensor on the back of the earbud to adjust the volume."

"Handy," Bond admitted. "Range?"

"About one-hundred and fifty meters. Your phone is downloading an app that will filter ambient noise, bit you can use them independently if need be."

"Good," Bond said, pocketing the case. "What about the standards?"

Q handed over a cardboard document envelope. "Travel documents for you and Agent Manyam. You'll be husband and wife, traveling under the Boldman cover to include visas to all ASEAN countries as well as India, Pakistan, and a half dozen others—whatever templates we had on hand. The biometric chips have been programed with a scrubber virus that will allow us to manipulate any facial recognition software used by that country's border security computers, so you should be able to travel with a relative degree of anonymity. We can also use it to eliminate any record of your travel, which will be implemented on M's order…"

"Of course."

"Right," Q said and walked over to his shooting range bench. "Now, your sidearm. We're field-testing a new polymer semi-automatic…"

"No," Bond said sharply, causing Q to look up, startled. "The PPK." Then he added, "For this mission, I need to make a personal statement."

4

In the end, and much to Bond's surprise, Q-Branch no longer stocked the classic Walther PPK ("They're bloody difficult to get—particularly in seven point six-five millimeter, they barely make any of those anymore," Q had complained with outsized peevishness), so Q had issued out a late-model Walther PPK/s chambered for 9mm-short. The gun was nearly identical to Bond's old standby, with its slightly longer grip being the only major difference (which translated into an extra bullet in the magazine). Once he'd signed for the equipment—scribbling his signature on a seemingly endless ream of forms while Q looked on with the baleful expression of a man sending his children to the workhouse—he returned to his office and shut the soundproof door. Then he sat behind his desk, propped one foot on a plastic equipment case and dialed his secure landline. The reception was vaguely tinny as it ran through countless safeguards and double-blinds, but after only a few seconds a voice answered.

"Leiter."

"I don't know what surprises me more, Felix, the fact that you're at your desk or the fact that you answer your own phone."

A chuckle was relayed from the other side of the Atlantic. "You must have me mistaken for someone with a position of authority and regard, Bond. I'm just a humble government servant. One that is, I should point out, working diligently to troubleshoot the mess you Brits seem to have made of Southeast Asia."

"Well, that's actually the reason I'm calling. I'm hoping that a humble government servant can help me out with said mess."

"We had a pool going for how long it would be until I got this call."

"Oh, and how did you fare?"

"I lost. I thought it'd be at least another twelve hours before we got an official request from Six."

"Well, this one isn't quite official."

"Oh, I'm not sure I want to know where this going. But I'm not sure I don't want to know either. "

"Just some information, Felix."

"If I have it I'll share it."

"That's what I was hoping. Tell me, has Langley sent anyone after the girl yet?"

There was a pause from the other end of the line. "If we did, that information would be compartmentalized tighter than a infectious diseases lab. Give me a little time."

"My flight's in three hours."

"You're awfully demanding for being the man behind the eight-ball. Don't worry. It shouldn't take me too long. You just have to know who to ask and where to look."

Bond thanked him and hung up. Seventeen minutes later, his phone rang.

"The kill order's been cut," Felix said, "but it hasn't been implemented yet. No travel funding has gone through. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that the Regional Director's keeping that one in his back pocket if it becomes necessary, but wants to give you all a chance to sort things out first. Honestly, our best play is to stay out of it as much as possible."

"You have anything more definitive than a travel budget?" Bond asked skeptically.

"Hey, brother, I don't know how things are done on that side of the pond, but here nothing gets done without a budget code and line-item big enough to underwrite a Third World nation's annual deficit. You know, should the need arise. Trust me, if the money isn't there, it's not happening."

"That's a valuable insight. Thank you, Felix."

A chuckle. "My word, it almost sounded like you were being judgmental. But I'm sure that can't be the case. Not after the dumpster fire you all started."

"We lack you American's practice, so we're doubly-disadvantaged. Thanks, Felix. I mean it."

"Good luck, James," Felix said with a disturbing amount of sincerity. "I really don't envy what you have to do."

Three hours later, as the night deepened, the silver arrowhead of an Airbus 380 canted upward, pierced the silver veil of clouds, and then flattened out on its long arcing trajectory through the dark. In a pod in the first-class cabin, James Bond nursed a martini and read a dossier, learning more about the woman he would likely kill.

5

 **Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia**

 **5:52 PM**

KL Station was located off a small, busy street about a kilometer south of the sprawling Perdana Botanical Gardens, just off of Jalan Scott, in a new, yet non-descript building wedged into the rest of the block, and now seemed to be shouldering the old salt-stained brick buildings aside with its steel and glass like a drunk fan at a football match. Their cover story was as a non-governmental entity of some sort with a mission plan about "new media" that was specific enough to be credible and nebulous enough to be forgettable.

Bond was met by the Chief of Station in the large, open-floorplan office, where a dozen or so young men and women wearing T-shirts that sported the fanciful NGO's logo clattered away at keyboards in meticulously messy-looking cubicles. A few were greeting and mingling with guests or clients, while the rest were surreptitiously hacking, intercepting, and relaying SIGINT. Of course, the real analysis went on in the back room, where Bond was led via a short corridor, decorated with an enormous mural that encompassed the entirety of the walls and floor and ceiling, and nicely concealed the pinhole cameras, motion sensors, and cellular suppressors.

"So, they sent you," Taylor Breckinridge said with no small amount of annoyance, when they sat down in his small, but tidy office. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I told Whitehall we could handle this in country. Indira Manyam was my agent. I know her contacts. I know her methods. I could feed the locals some small amount of very specific information and put them on to her in a day. Then it would be a small thing to convince them to turn her over—a few million pounds worth of inducement money we could funnel through some foreign aid endeavor or other—and the whole thing would look completely legitimate." He leaned his rangy frame back in the modernist plastic chair and draped one arm casually over the back, a small gesture directed at Bond to show just how little he was impressed by the visiting double-oh.

"But, I see they decided the best approach was to bring an outside man to hunt her down. Well, good luck, friend. Manyam ran countless operations all over the region. Here, Jakarta, Bangkok, even one in The Maldives, though I suspect that one was just to secure a cheap luxury resort for the occasional weekend of snorkeling. Anyway, you've got your work cut out for you. Good luck."

"For all our sakes," Bond said neutrally. "She nearly started a war."

"Oh, she declared war, Bond," Breckinridge said disgustedly. "Make no mistake. She knew the CIA had the hotel wired, and that were spliced in on the feed. And not only that, but we had a few of our people mixed in with the security teams just for good measure."

"So she could have been going up against her own if things went sideways," Bond said, more to himself than for Breckinridge's benefit.

"Oh, yes. That killing was a performance, and we were the audience. Forget the manifesto-that was after the fact. The way she ended Muqam? The fact that it was captured perfectly on camera? That was sheer showmanship. I'm mildly surprised she didn't curtsey at the end of it."

"Why? What's the point?"

"I take it you didn't read that dossier as closely as you say you did," Breckinridge said flippantly, and Bond tamped down the urge to backhand the man out of his cheap, trendy chair. "She was throwing it in my face. Twisting the knife for all those operations I refused to let her run."

"Targeting Muqam?"

Breckinridge sighed and waved a hand airily, "Muqam, the head of the ISI, the Pakistani Ambassador, Musharraf's bloody chef…listen, Bond, I'm sympathetic to the fact that she lost family in the Mumbai attacks, but she was a textbook case of losing one's perspective over a personal loss. Of course, the Paki government had some kind of a hand in helping LeT—either overtly or under the table—but her theories and conspiracies…well, they were just sodding fictions she dreamt up. And even if there was some truth to them, what does it matter? India and Pakistan's sibling rivalry isn't worth our getting invested in, and no one would thank us if we did. That was what she never understood: we have a larger mission than simply attributing blame for one terrorist incident."

"So why didn't you send her home?" Bond asked. "If she was such a loose cannon, why keep her around?"

"Because she was cracking good agent!" Breckinridge replied. "Look, get past that blind spot, and she could do the job like no one's business. Her diplomatic cover was perfect. She could work an embassy party like no one I've ever seen—chatting up dignitaries in their language, talking about economic policy, and demarches, and stimulus packages, and all the while fluttering her lashes, laughing at their jokes, and generally making every straight man in the room want to take her home."

"And then?"

Breckinridge shrugged. "And then she'd go home with most valuable source of intel. I'll tell you this, Bond, when it came to honey traps, she was second to none. The Americans can keep their drones and waterboarding. What Indira has between her brown thighs is a more effective weapon. And she's not shy about deploying it, if you understand my meaning."

Bond didn't know whether Breckinridge was really as much of a pig as he came off, but either way it was clear he was testing Bond, seeing whether he'd blanch at his coarseness or join in. He kept his expression neutral, but let a slight frown pull at his lips to show his disdain. "Who was she running lately?" he asked.

"Who?" Breckinridge shifted in his chair. "Whoever she could. She's worked half the senior embassy officers and whatever prominent business leaders she could hook." He snorted. "Girl must have a revolving door on her flat."

Bond was getting annoyed. "So who did she have her hooks into the deepest?"

Breckinridge held his hands open and half-shrugged. "She was a busy girl."

Bond glared at the man and got a mask of barely-concealed resentment in return. "Well," he said finally, "Six has her field reports. I'm sure everything I need will be available from them."

"I'm sure they'll get them to you with their typical efficiency," Breckinridge said. Bond didn't mention that he had those reports on an Iron Key drive in his hip pocket. "Sorry you came all this way for nothing."

Bond stood up and buttoned his suit coat. "Don't be," he said. "Meeting you has been very enlightening."

6

Bond had booked himself a suite at the Ritz-Carlton, which hugged the edge of Kuala Lumpur's dazzling Golden Triangle district—a wealthy shopping and entertainment district where glittering malls selling Bugati roadsters and £250,000 chronometers jostled for position along the major traffic artery of Jalan Bukit. From his suite, Bond could see the slow river of red brake lights bisecting the assaultive brilliance of the malls' white showlights. Bond swirled his brandy in his glass, then took a sip. It was Chateau Mouton Rothschild and slid down his throat as silkily as mercury. The whole block looked as it was made of crystal. When he lifted his gaze he saw the bold, gleaming twin spires of Petronas Towers—they too were seemingly made of glass, with barely a hint of their steel and concrete undergirding. A glass metropolis, he mused. An emergent economy transforming the old city into a panopticon, and somewhere, hiding from the glass was the woman he was sent to kill.

He pulled himself away from the window and settled down with his triple-encrypted laptop and accessed Manyam's field reports from his Iron Key drive. After about 90 minutes or so of skimming her reports from over the past two years, he developed a grudging respect for her. Whatever her methods, the woman clearly worked hard. Her reports, taken in total, became something like a Dickensian serial novel with a sprawling cast of characters who flitted in and out—some forming substantial plotlines and narrative arcs, while others simply showed to enliven the story or move it along a bit.

Bond could also tell that Manyam had all but weaponized her social graces. The stories were all propelled by her relentless ability to work a room and immediately size up the occupants—who was the most valuable? The most pliable? The most vulnerable? At embassy cocktail parties, she connected Subject A with Subject B and put Plan Z in motion, which yielded Result X. At the long, boozy Sunday brunches with embassy wives, she listened patiently to their complaints and discontents, keenly noting which couples were weak, divisible, exploitable. Breckinridge had dismissed her as a common whore, when in fact she was a master of manipulation. Was the man truly that stupid and sexist that he couldn't recognize such an asset at his disposal? Did he simply dismiss her reports, operations, and the data they yielded?

It turned out to be easier than Bond expected to pick up her trail. Her tell was former Malaysian cabinet minister named Wibowo, who, after losing his seat some years in the past had put his considerable takings into real estate. He never really factored into any of her ops, and yet he popped up fairly consistently in her reports, never with any seeming payoff. When Bond used the laptop's encrypted Internet connection to run Wibowo through MI-6's records, his suspicions were confirmed. Along with a series of high-rise office towers that would form the spine of new business district, Wibowo still held onto a few of the old, low-rent flats that had begun his real estate ventures. They were clustered near the Central Station market, in the neighborhood known colloquially as Little India.

Excitement hummed in his ears, but Bond tamped down the urge to grab the PPK/s and tear off to Little India. Manyam had a safe house, he reasoned. Which meant she was holed up until she could devise a way out of the country under the radar—in all likelihood hopping a boat to Singapore or Indonesia—but she would still need travel documents, and that would take time. So she wasn't going anywhere soon, and there was no reason for Bond to try and roust her in the middle of the night from a neighborhood she blended into and he didn't.

Instead, he shrugged into his suit coat, left his tie on the bed, and headed down to the bar. There were other directions to channel his energy.

7

The hotel bar had a desperately cosmopolitan name that Bond forgot the moment he stepped inside. It was appropriately dimly-lit with violet lights deepening the color scheme, which was likely brighter and more welcoming during the daytime. Thievery Corporation's "Lebanese Blonde" played at an appropriately ambient volume, and Bond wondered if some secret compact had been hammered out in the 1990s amongst the major hotel chains to keep the song on regular rotation in their bars.

It took him a few minutes to notice the Americans—the bar was about a third full, and they'd done a reasonable enough job being inconspicuous by taking a booth opposite the bar. They wore polos and khakis, but their Merrill hiking shoes and their overall bulk—exaggerated physiques that were obviously as honed by injection needles as they were by exercise machines-gave them away. The beards and tattoos just made it that much easier.

Bond settled into a bar stool and ordered a martini from a woman so dark and lithe she might have been made of smoke, then put in Q's earbuds. There was an initial echoing bellow as the tiny directional mics searched for a source to lock on to, but after Bond opened the app Q had installed on his phone, the American-accented conversation came through with startling clarity.

" _What'd he order?"_

" _A martini, looks like."_

" _Pussy. The fuck's everyone so spun up about? All this guy's done so far is order room service and go to the bar."_

" _We get to ask questions, all of a sudden? That how this works now?"_

" _I'm just saying."_

" _They wanna pay me to watch a guy drink in a bar, I'm happy to do it without asking questions. What do you want to bet he makes a run at that bartender, fuck was her name?"_

" _I didn't pay attention. This part of the world, if it's not white, I'm not touching it."_

"It must be interesting." The voice coming around the conversation relayed through the earbuds was disorienting enough to give Bond a start. The speaker had insinuated herself into the seat next to him at bar as easily and silently as oxygen filling a vacuum, and Bond wondered how he could have failed to notice a woman as beautiful as this. He must be losing his edge.

"Not really," he said, recovering slightly. "A co-worker's podcast. It's…precisely what I expected it to be." He removed the earbuds and stowed them in his coat pocket. "Certainly no reason to be antisocial."

"Our devices give us access to the world and so we do not see what is right in front of us," the woman said with a faint South Asian accent and sharply rolled Rs.

"Or to the left of us, as the case may be," Bond said. The sylphin bartender brought the woman a cosmopolitan, the colors vivid through the glass, and her dark eyes flittered between Bond and the woman before she evaporated once again. "Really quite inexcusable of me, Ms…?"

"Fazura," she said, raising her glass. "Liyani Fazura."

"Bond, James Bond." They touched glasses, Liyani's eyes not leaving his. In the altered light of the bar they were light, almost blue. Contacts, perhaps, Bond thought. Everything else about Liyani Fazura was meticulously put together—the onyx cascade of her hair around and over her shoulder like spun, black glass; the impeccably applied makeup, blended seamlessly to give the illusion of her natural look; the cerulean blue of her evening dress complimenting the light brown swell of her cleavage. The woman seemed less like she had dressed to go out than she'd been engineered to be the woman every heterosexual man hopes to meet in a high-end bar and never does.

"And what brings you all the way to KL, Mister Bond? You didn't come all the way here just to look at your phone."

"Work, I'm afraid. A quick meeting with the regional team. Nothing terribly interesting."

"Ah," Liyani said airily. "What sort of business are you in? You have a nice suit, but you don't look like a banker."

"What does a banker look like?"

"Not like you."

Bond smiled wryly and produced a UnivEx business card he placed on the bar. It was one of the new line with an updated logo that Bond thought looked like an overripe orange, but everyone in Design thought was brilliant.

"Universal Exports?" Liyani picked up the card and looked at the front and back. "And what do you export from Malaysia?"

Bond shrugged. It was an old cover, and he could front a convincing cover story in his sleep. "Any number of things. Malaysia is wealthy with resources. You can't turn your head in this country without discovering something rare and lovely."

Liyani Fazura smiled and looked down at her drink, taken aback by his boldness. If seduction was a game of chess, he'd just castled and wiped out a layer of her king's defenses.

"I'm…I'm so pleased you're enjoying my country." She looked up from her drink. "I miss it when I travel."

"And what do you do?"

"I'm in the hospitality business."

"A field in which you must excel," Bond said. "I know I feel more at ease around you."

Liyani smirked, having been prepared for that one, and closed her eyes languidly, then met his gaze again. "I travel regionally and inspect our various venues."

Bond noticed the thin, ornate silver bracelet on her right wrist. "Did you bring that back from one of your travels?"

"I did," Liyani said, absently fingering the silver scallops and ridges. "Found it at a market in Labuan Bajo, where we're looking at sites for a new resort. Are you familiar with the area?"

"I'm afraid I've not been yet."

"You most definitely should. It's lovely."

"Your work must be interesting. Seeing all those places."

"Interesting, but lonely." She ran a finger around the rim of her glass contemplatively. "Always the one at the restaurant by myself. Always finishing the day in an empty hotel room. You understand, of course."

"Actually, I don't," Bond said. "I can't fathom why a woman such as you should ever find herself alone."

"You're very direct, Mister Bond. But as it happens, I put my work before everything else. I imagine that's why."

"More's the pity for everything else, then." Bond sipped his martini, felt the alcohol flare against the sexuality crackling between them.

"Speaking of work, how are your accommodations here? I trust they meet your expectations?"

"Deplorable," Bond said with a hint of smile. "Simply deplorable. I'd very much like to lodge a complaint."

"Well," Liyani said, the ambient light glittering in her eyes, "perhaps I should inspect your suite personally."

"I think that's a splendid idea." Bond killed his drink, and they sidled away from the bar. The surveillance team could be dealt with in the morning.

8

The cool, blue evening dress slid to the floor easily, becoming a silken puddle, which Liyani Fazura stepped out of with a deliberate movement intended to show off the curving musculature of her legs, the taper of her ankles and the elegant straps of her stiletto pumps. "Is there anything we can do to keep you as a loyal customer?" She asked primly. Bond took in the sight of her; the lean, brown body striated with muscles, her full, high breasts, and the vivid blue wedge of her expensive thong. Her eyes held his gaze, daring him to look away from her nudity.

"I have a number of suggestions," Bond said, pulling her to him and kissing her hard on the mouth. Liyana returned the kiss, lashed out at his tongue with her own. He carried her to the bed, and she allowed herself to be carried and dropped into the cloudbank of covers. Bond watched her roll around in them as he undressed. She didn't offer to help him. When he joined her in the bed, the sex was much the same as everything else about her: practiced and proficient, but less for him than for herself. She might have been competing for points on poise and style. It was a satisfying session, but hardly the most memorable he'd ever had.

"I do so hope, we've managed to win back your business, Mister Bond," Liyani smiled as she draped her arm over his chest and nestled her head into the hollow of his shoulder. Her skin was still cool, despite the exertion, but she breathed deeply, her breasts pressing against him.

"I think you can call me James now."

She giggled. "Yes, I suppose so." She reached across him, her breasts brushing across his naked chest, and lifted his watch up so she could see it. Her nipples were hard once again, and Bond instinctively tensed. "Is that the time? Damn! I have to be in a conference call with Geneva in a half hour." She slid out of bed and dressed almost as quickly as she had undressed.

"I don't suppose they'll understand if you call them tomorrow and say that you were managing an important account."

She laughed again as she rifled through her purse. "I'm afraid not, but for what it's worth, this really was the best possible way this evening could have concluded. For me anyway."

And then the tiny, silver gun made its appearance, but Bond hand already flung one of the heavy, down pillows at her gun hand. Liyani managed to squeeze off a shot that was muffled by the pillow hitting her wrist, blasting a cloud of feathers and sending a small-caliber cracking into the headboard next to Bond's left ear.

Bond launched himself at her, covered the distance, and had a grip on her wrist before she could reacquire him as a target. Liyani's eyes narrowed and she hissed like a feral cat. Her free hand lashed out at him, and bond felt a sharp across his chest. Startled he leapt back. Liyani's ornate bracelet was tinged red, and he was aware of blood trickling down his torso. In the lamplight he could see that the bracelet was a series of small, scalloped blades.

Liyani took advantage of his moment of confusion and bolted for the door. Bond let her go—there was no way he could get into his clothes quickly enough to catch up with her, and he couldn't very well chase her through the hotel naked. Besides, he reasoned, if she was the professional he thought she was, then she had her exit route already mapped out.

Bond poured himself another brandy and set about bandaging the long, shallow cut that arced above his breast in a slim crimson comma. Not the best possible ending to the day, he mulled. But not the worst either.

9

Bond woke early the next morning after an usually sound and refreshing sleep—the result of jet lag, sexual fulfillment, and a post-coital adrenaline dump. He packed his belongings and checked out of the hotel. Q-Branch didn't have any specialized vehicles in the field in this part of the world, so he used a standard embassy surveillance vehicle, a non-descript Toyota sedan.

He spotted the tail fairly early on in his sweep of Wibowo's properties. The heavy traffic easily choked the old, winding streets around Central Market, and it was easy to pick up the tail vehicles. They were a couple of bulky Toyota Hiluxes—SUVs which had a reputation for being nigh-indestructible, but they were also large and cumbersome in traffic, and once Bond found a gap in the turgid stream of cars he hammered the gas, while simultaneously activating the ECM app on his smart phone. The little sedan surged through a narrow gauntlet of taxicabs, and zipped into oncoming traffic as a flood of scooters filled the gap Bond had exploited. Horns blared as he ran counter to the flow of traffic for about fifty meters before turning into the intersection and falling into normal traffic. He checked his mirrors. The Hiluxes were stranded a solid block behind him and unable to radio any other members of the team who might be mobile.

Bond followed traffic around Central Market while his phone chirped on a regular interval as it searched for any type of encrypted signal. The buildings here were old concrete apartment buildings whose cracked and crumbling faces had once been painted bright shades of yellow and orange and pink, but had since faded under the onslaught of humidity, exhaust fumes, and time. Little India's bright, smiling face had moved to another neighborhood, and Bond very quickly ascertained that this neighborhood was for the low castes, the migrants, and the people whose options had dwindled to the point that they were here in country that only tangentially shared their culture.

The phone yelped a long, steady alarm as Bond in front of a tired six-story tenement. He dumped the car in a crowded underground lot and checked the phone's locator. He had to hand it Q; the technology was impressive. It had identified the signal as an encrypted VHF transmission and spat out a set of MGRS coordinates.

Bond stepped out of the car and into the sweltering parking garage. He wore a short-sleeved batik shirt unbuttoned over an Under Armor T-shirt and loose-fitting cargo pants to afford some relief from the heat, but he still felt perspiration snaking down his legs and the small of his back almost immediately. He clipped the holster with the PPK/s behind his right kidney and clipped three spare magazines to his belt behind the left.

The stairwell was cool and lit with cold, fluorescent lights and smelled like mold and wet concrete. He heard a cacophony of voices and the heavy footfalls of children playing above him, so he kept the gun holstered. The transmission detector put the signal on the sixth floor, and Bond took the steps at a steady pace. Even in the clammy chill of the stairwell, perspiration slicked the back of his neck and bristled along his scalp.

He had to weave his way through a few rambunctious gangs, but the kids barely paid attention to him past whatever games or mischief they were up to. Luckily, the sixth floor was empty. Bond drew his gun and kicked the fire door open sweeping the hallway for any signs of a threat, but there were none. Here, outside the concrete insulation of the stairwell, he could hear the low throb of life in the poorly-maintained tenement.

He didn't need to check the phone's MGRS to know which unit was Manyam's safe-house—it would be the one opposite the stairs to provide a faster egress in an emergency. It would be solid-core with reinforced hinges and a deadbolt. Bond grabbed four of Q's coin-explosives and tossed them at the door, then stormed into the blast and kicked the damaged door beneath the scorched knob.

Indira Manyam was in a low crouch near the center of the room. She had a polymer sub-compact automatic leveled at him, and his gun was pointed at her.

"Agent Manyam," he said.

"So," she replied, "you are the one they sent."

They both fired

10

Bond heard the bullet tear apart the air beside his right ear—a sound like some great, furious hornet—but his attention was fixed on his target, the bearded American with the sleeve-tattoos from the bar last night. Only when he saw the man's head snap back with the impact of Bond's 9mm-short round and empty its contents in an abstract spray against the dingy wall behind him, did Bond react and re-engage his surroundings.

Movement blurred in his peripheral vision, and Bond spun to see a nearly-identical intruder behind him, one hand clasped over a spreading bloodstain on the chest of his shirt where the furious hornet landed. Shot through the lung, coughing blood, the second man swung a big automatic toward Bond in a fatally-long arc. Bond pivoted and fired from the hip, his shot blending into the louder boom of Indira's gun barking behind him. The intruder's chest shredded and he went down on the cheap, linoleum floor.

"You spoiled my shot," Indira said, rising from her shooter's crouch position. "I would have killed him with one round if I didn't have to aim around you."

"That's very much not the issue right now, Agent Manyam," Bond said as he looked over the second intruder. He wasn't one of the men from the bar, but he had the same carefully-cultivated aggressive look: beard, tattoos ringing steroid-enhanced biceps, tinted shooting glasses. He might have stepped off of any number of web sites hawking the latest tactical-gear. "The issue is that more are coming."

"You have a car? Mine's burned." Indira gathered up a small knapsack.

"Yes. Getting to it will be the problem." Bond holstered his PPK/s and scooped up the intruder's gun. It was a Heckler & Koch VP9—a chunky, polymer-framed semi-automatic pistol with a light trigger, but more critically, a 15-round magazine. Bond swore by his Walther, but if they had to shoot their way out of the tenement, he'd need all the firepower he could get.

"How many are there?"

"Half dozen, I'd guess. Possibly more. What are your egress routes?"

"Main entrance, stairwell, and fire escape. This one must have come in the fire escape," she cocked her head toward the man Bond killed.

"You didn't have sensors on the window?"

"I was distracted. I was waiting for you," Indira's eyes narrowed with simmering resentment.

"Well, you can thank me for saving your life later. We'll go down the way I came up: fire stairs."

"They'll have people posted in them by now if they're any good," Indira flattened against the doorframe.

"The confined space will eliminate any advantage they have." Bond pressed in beside her, suddenly aware of heat and scent of her body so close to his. He forced the thought away and distracted himself by poking his head out the doorway. It was only for a moment, but in that time he saw three large silhouettes against the sallow light of the hallway. Voices shouted. _"That's a negative on Team Alpha! Targets are still active!"_

"I'll cover," Bond said over his shoulder to Indira. "Don't wait for me, just run." Without waiting for an answer, he pivoted his upper body out the doorway and opened fire with the VP9. The gun spat hollow-point rounds in a long, staccato drumbeat, and Bond was satisfied to see the foremost man crumple under the impact. Behind him, the two others flattened against the walls and tried to draw a bead. One squeezed off a long, tearing burst from a Glock machine-pistol which chewed up the doorframe, but Bond had already thrown himself toward the fire doors. Indira popped into view from behind him, sliding the big pendent from around her neck along the floor toward the surviving assailants.

"Come on!" she shouted and dragged Bond through the fire doors. A moment later, in the stairwell, Bond saw the doorway filled with an intense, white light, more brilliant than a Search and Rescue helicopter's spotlight. Dimly, he made out agonized screams from the hallway.

"Our Quartermaster calls it The Dazzler," she said with a grin. "We told him he needs to come up with a better name. Something more sinister. Light of Justice or some such."

"My Quartermaster forgot to issue me one of those," Bond said ruefully.

"You couldn't pull off a gaudy choker. Not with that complexion."

Bond tried to think of a witty retort, but she was already sprinting down the stairs, taking steps two at a time. He followed, and they reached the parking garage landing in under a minute. The gunman assigned to cover Bond's car was distracted by something coming through his earpiece—shouts of rage and frustration from the temporarily-blinded team in the hallway, Bond reckoned—and he only barely had time to notice the two of them bursting out of the stairwell before Indira shot him once in the chest.

"I've got a back-up safehouse," she told Bond as they climbed into the Toyota.

"I know someplace better," he said and stepped on the accelerator.

11

" _This_ is your idea of a safehouse?" Indira fumed incredulously as Bond tipped the bellman of the Ritz-Carlton and asked for the front desk to send up the same brandy he'd ordered the previous evening.

"It's safe," Bond said easily after the bellman had left. "It has its own security system, and most importantly it's public. The many, many people who want you dead or in their custody won't be able to get away with a fire team armed with automatic weapons coming after us in the lobby. Not with the conference still going on."

"So you're taking me back to England?" Indira asked warily, and Bond felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. His hand twitched, seeming to want to move of its on accord to the holster with the Walther.

"Unless you'd prefer I leave you here with a bullet in your skull," he said. "That was my other option. The preferred option by some at Vauxhall, I think, but I believed you're owed some professional courtesy for your services."

Indira's eyes bored into his, and she exhaled through her nose like an athlete in the moment before the starting gun. "I didn't kill him, Bond."

"You know there's video, don't you? There were cameras in the suite."

"Of course there were camera's in the suite!" She spat. "I was the one who flattered the CIA station chief until he agreed to install the bloody things! I'm saying it wasn't me on that video."

"It was."

"It was an _image_ of me, but I never said that. I never did any of that. I wasn't even in the building at the time. I was at bloody KLCC park, meeting a contact."

"And this contact will back your story?"

"No, because my contact was hanging from a tree by his neck. That was when I ran and the news alerts began blowing up my mobile. I was set up."

Bond frowned. "You're going to have to do better than that. We're trying to prevent a war between India and Pakistan, and conspiracy theories aren't going to accomplish that."

"Well what the hell and I supposed to do!" she raged, throwing her bag on the floor. "You want me to take a fucking polygraph exam?"

"Give me an explanation," Bond said sharply. "Tell me why someone set you up—we'll ignore the how for now. I can ask my Quartermaster about that later and get a painfully-long explanation of the possibilities. No, just tell me the why."

Indira sighed and slumped onto the couch. "Breckinridge," she said quietly. "I've been asking myself the same question since that park where I found a noose around Rayat's neck, and That's all I can come up with. Breckinridge."

"That's a name, not an explanation."

"Look, Bond, I don't know why, but Breckinridge knew I was out to nail Muqam—god, did we fight over that—and he also knew Rayat. I had to log all my intelligence contacts. And that video, I think it's a repurposed version of one I did for my cover at the embassy. It was supposed to be dire warning about the deforestation of Malaysia or some such. Breckinridge had a copy. He wanted to try and embed encrypted messages in it for deep-cover operatives. Use it as a way to pass messages to them. He or someone who works for him must have altered it. They got the voice almost right."

"You're asking me to believe a great deal."

She looked up at him, her curls sticking to the drying perspiration on her brow. "Then why didn't you kill me at the safehouse?"

"I have an aversion to killing our people on political whims. At least not when I can bring them in alive." Bond shrugged out of his damp batik shirt, trying to look nonchalant, but he could feel Indira's eyes appraising him.

"You don't disbelieve me, though."

"I believe they have poor champagne in First Class and it's a long flight home, so I would just as soon get started."

"They'll take out the plane, Bond," she said urgently. "Once they know we're on it."

Bond unclipped the holster containing the Walther placed it on the desk beside the couch. "To be clear: you are accusing a member of MI6 of high treason and terrorism. Seemingly without motive."

"Breckinridge set up the surveillance on Muqab. There was no order from London, but he bloody well insisted on it. After months of refusing my ops against the Pakistanis, suddenly he's going to the CIA for a surveillance package."

"That's not proof."

" _Then bloody ask him!"_ Indira shouted exasperatedly, throwing up her hands. "He's on his way to Bangkok right now, but you're welcome to go there and ask him. And while you're at it, you can ask him why he's abandoning his station in the midst of a major conference and now an international crisis."

Bond looked at her.

"But first ask him why he booked this travel under a different name—not one of the cryptonyms he's registered with London."

"That," Bond said, "is a very good question."

"So, you believe me now?"

Bond felt it: he at the moment he'd always suspected he'd arrive at when he accepted this mission. It was the moment where he he'd take a leap of faith on the word of fellow agent, or stuff it all and simply follow orders. "Something more is clearly going on here," Bond said as he sank into a chair. "The men we left at the safehouse were on me last night, but before I left London I confirmed with my contact in the CIA that they hadn't yet dispatched a team to take you out. They do have a capture-or-kill order out for you, but they're content to let us handle it. Those men were sent by someone else. Also, they sent a woman to kill me. Malaysian. It's not CIA protocol to utilize a third-country national to work in concert with a hit team. They worked for someone else."

Indira leaned forward, her face a mask of raw urgency. "Something is very wrong here, Bond, and it's at the heart of intelligence operations in this region."

"I need to take you back to London," Bond said. "By way of Bangkok." The doorbell rang, followed by the faint call of the bellman. "Oh good, the brandy's here."

12

As it turned out, Q's work was as good as his word, and getting out of the country was surprisingly easy. Indira wore a wig she'd used several times before on different assignments, and the smartchips in the passports supplied by Q-Branch had successfully scrambled any biometric software that Malaysian Customs might have been using, allowing the two of them to board a small, crowded AirAsia Airbus for the short flight to Thailand. There, the Airbus banked and followed the coastline, until the vast stretches outside of Bond's window of green and brown of farms and paddies gave way to the concrete and pavement of the country's capital city. The plane slid through the low-lying haze of humidity and pollution like a stiletto slipped between a target's ribs, and made its landing at the old Don Muang airport near the city center.

Thai Immigration passed them through easily, and soon enough they sat in an over-air-conditioned luxury sedan that smelled of jasmine, admiring the jagged spires of downtown Bangkok's skyline slowly pass by their window as their cab driver tried with limited success to find gaps in the choking traffic.

"You handle the hotel," Indira told Bond. "I'll get a bead in Breckinridge."

"The hotel is already taken care of, but your part of the plan seems a touch vague. Care to share with me how you plan on doing that?"

"Trade secret," Indira said. She winked coquettishly and tossed her hair, then laughed at her affectation. Bond enjoyed the glimpse she gave of the nape of her neck. "I'm afraid if I told you, you would be scandalized."

"Well, I do have a reputation around the office as a bit of a Calvinist…"

Indira laughed again. It seemed that being someplace other than Malaysia—even if it was only marginally safer—had had an impressive impact on her mood and manners. The self-burning intensity Bond had seen in her at their first meeting had given way to a personality that could be downright playful. "Yes, that's the reputation of Double-Oh Seven encapsulated. 'Easily shocked. Easily offended.'"

"I've asked them to redact that bit."

Indira said nothing for a moment, simply smiled at him, then leaned against her door and toyed with her glossy hair. "The current South Korean Ambassador to Thailand used to be assigned to KL," Indira explained. "I met his wife at one of the long, well-liquored brunches that were the center of social activities."

"I understand you were instrumental in both promoting the brunches and ensuring the alcohol kept flowing."

Indira shrugged girlishly. "One uses the resources at their disposal. Anyway, Maggie Moon, the Ambassador's much-younger, former K-Pop star wife, was having trouble adjusting to the rather staid lifestyle she'd married into. I sensed she needed a friend, so I made myself available to her. As it turns out," Indira's lip curled only the slightest fraction, "she was feeling neglected by husband in oh so _many_ ways…"

Now it was Bond's turn to smirk coldly. "One uses the resources at their disposal."

"I'm relatively sure she was lying when she told me she'd never done 'things like _that_ before.' But the rest of her intel turned out to be impressively solid."

"Thank you for exercising my imagination, but what does this have to do with Breckinridge?"

"His movements will be logged by Customs and are traceable. He'll need some pretext to be here. There must be some diplomatic shindig. Maggie will know what it is. I'll just send her a text—um…I want to know the name of that new designer whose bag I liked so much—and I can work that into what she's up to today. Can your phone mask my cellular activity?"

"Yes, hold on…" Bond brought out his Q-Branch issue phone and activated the secure uplink.

"Perfect," Indira began tapping away at her own phone.

"Your cover's been blown. She might have seen you on the news."

Indira snorted. "Not unless the fashion channel carried the story." After a few minutes of intermittent tapping, while Bond watched the sun-blasted spires of Bangkok's newest high-rise office buildings and multi-million dollar condos crawl by, Indira slipped her phone into her pocket with a slight flourish.

"Got it! Diplomatic party for the Dutch Ambassador at the Erawan Grand Hyatt at nine tonight. That means Breckinridge will be there closer to ten or ten thirty. He does so like to be fashionably late."

"We'll need access," Bond mused. "Let's see if we can manage that through the embassy here."

"There's a service entrance we can use. Maggie said it was how they smuggle the more expensive call girls into the venue without them showing up on guest lists. They're being arranged for some of the diplomats from, shall we say, more _restrictive_ countries."

Bond shook his head. "The secrets one's privy to as the spouse of an Ambassador. Pity she's not more discreet with them."

"Maggie never could keep her mouth shut," Indira said.

Bond gave her sidelong look, which was returned, the double-entendre unspoken between them.

"I wonder how much further to the hotel…"

13

The Montien Riverside Hotel was a new luxury high-rise, which hugged the bank of Chao Praya River at its southernmost dogleg, affording its guests breathtaking views regardless of the orientation of their rooms. The king suite that Bond selected looked north at the snaking river and the older luxury hotels that dotted its banks. Bond felt a stab of melancholy as he regarded the sleek, sail-shaped Hilton Hotel with its great cylindrical lounge, like an air-traffic control tower. The architecture reached back to a time when the nature of the job was easier.

Indira had packed an evening gown, but its lines had been all but murdered by having been stuffed in the small pack she carried. The bellman assured them that they could have it pressed and presentable within a few hours and accepted Bond's offered 100 baht note with a wai that was somewhat disproportionate to the tip.

Bond then called Rajawongse tailors-his preferred tailor shop—and confirmed that they were still holding two dinner jackets and six shirts he'd had bespoke during his last visit and would send them over immediately.

"So, you'll be able to make yourself presentable for a diplomatic party?" Indira asked playfully.

"I'll even wear a belt."

"Well, while we're waiting, I think I could use a freshening up," Indira said as she walked across the suite, shedding her cotton top and T-shirt with a practiced ease. Bond enjoyed her silhouette against the purpling skyline.

"Care for some company?"

She turned, one arm draped over her bare breasts. "I suppose I wouldn't mind." She turned away from him, then slid her capris down to her ankles and stepped out of them into the bedroom. Bond followed and found her sitting at the edge of the bed, naked, leaning back on her outstretched arms. He took in the majesty of her body—curvaceous but not soft; her breasts heavy but firm, her legs generous with solid muscle with just a shadow of hair in the delta between them.

Bond stood before her and unbuttoned his own shirt. "I guess we can work our way to shower."

Indira Manyam was as a bold lover, brazenly and unabashedly taking her pleasure from him in the manner she determined, allowing Bond the luxury of merely obliging until her sharp cries and spasming body told him she had arrived at her destination. After, she set about attending to Bond in a fashion that put to rest any lingering question in Bond's mind about Indira Manyam's ability to sexually subjugate herself to a man. But selfishness was never in Bond's character, and he steered them to a mutual climax, with Indira burying her nails deeply into his back. "Good lord," she whispered when they'd collapsed, spent, into the meringue of crisp cotton sheets. "What you did…" before they slipped into a light doze while the sky rolled from orange to black.

14

 **Erawan Hotel**

 **Ratchaprasong District**

 **2117 hrs.**

"Behave yourself," Indira Manyam said quietly as they walked past the unconcerned-looking security staff minding the entrance to the ballroom.

"Me?" Bond asked with mock-innocence. "I'm always on my best behavior."

Indira gave him a sly sideways look. "After what you did two hours ago, I very much doubt that. Just try not to get distracted by the tall Dutch women and the tiny Thai women. I still need your help with this."

"Then I'll keep my attention fixed on the properly-sized Indian woman."

"You'd better."

"It's not difficult, really." And it wasn't with Indira's evening gown a purple sheath accentuating the curves of her body and plunging deeply between her breasts, where she'd positioned a string of garnets. Any heterosexual man who wasn't stricken temporarily dumb by the sight of her must be dead, Bond considered.

The ballroom was laid out in a tulip-themed hedge maze, guiding the guests past various stations that were such stereotypes of Dutch culture they bordered on parody. They entered through the sails of a paper-mache windmill, then proceeded to a station boasting Dutch beers and chocolate-covered waffles served by enthusiastic Thai women dressed in dirndls, which someone at the Dutch embassy presumably decided were close enough to traditional Dutch dress to suffice for this occasion.

"Very swank," Bond commented dryly.

Indira clicked her tongue. "Empires shift at functions such as this. Fortunes are decided. Alliances made and enemies plotted against."

"All that intrigue," Bond said, "amid the chocolate waffles and dark beer."

Bond took a flute of champagne from a freshly-materialized waiter. Indira spotted someone she knew and detached herself from Bond's arm. He watched her cross the room, enjoying the sight of her hips and buttocks moving beneath her dress. If the fate of empires were indeed being decided at this affair, then Indira Manyam was certainly capable of sinking a few of them.

He sipped at his champagne and moved to a small cul-de-sac featuring blown-up photo prints of an art exhibit featuring sculptures of cows. Indira was working a smallish crowd of three or four women—embassy wives, Bond guessed from the vague air of diffidence and resentment they carried. In another corner the Dutch Ambassador was holding court with a variety of men in suits too expensive and well tailored to have been American diplomats.

He spotted Taylor Breckinridge on his second sweep of the room. The man had shed his carefully-cultivated dressed-down fashion for a sleek blazer over a powder-blue cotton T-shirt. Bond had to give the man credit: he managed to look like he belonged at the party without looking like a government worker. The various Russian and Chinese surveillance operatives who worked this and ever other embassy event would presume he was a businessman or some other wealthy scion that governments were forced to cater to on a depressingly regular basis. He was having a rather animated conversation with a cluster of Royal Thai Military officers, whose gold buttons and decorations glinted in the subdued light every time they laughed or waied.

Bond bit back the flash of adrenaline pushing him to action, and cast a glance Indira's way. She caught and Bond gave a quick nod in Breckinridge's direction. Then he watched as she politely excused herself—the body-language was unmistakable even across the room—and drifted over to him.

"So, our man has poked his head above ground," Indira said behind the mask of a polite greeting.

"He's entertaining some highly-decorated Thai military types. At least I assume they're decorated. They're awfully shiny, in any case."

"Let's you and I blend into the wallpaper and see where he goes from here. He won't stay long." Indira turned slightly on the pretense of sipping her champagne. Bond did the same, while throwing a surreptitious glance over his shoulder in Breckinridge's direction. They mimed small talk for a few moments until Bond saw Breckinridge engage in a fresh round of wai-ing, deeper and longer this time.

"Here, I think he's heading out."

Indira feigned a laugh as a cover and glanced around for herself. "He's heading toward the main exit. We can use the service exit and intercept him outside. Come, I know this hotel."

She took Bond by the hand and led him to the service doorway at the back of the ballroom, concealed by heavy curtains. They wove through the narrow hallway, past the kitchen and to a set of concrete stairs that led to a heavy fire door and out into the heat and furor of the Bangkok night.

'There he is," Bond pointed to the figure bounding down the Erawan's curving main stairway, pausing to exchange pleasantries with the doorman. "Quite a man of the people, isn't he?"

"Friend to all," Indira said bitterly.

"He's grabbing a cab," Bond said.

"I'll flag one down."

"Hold one," Bond said. "I've a better idea." He stepped over to the side of the road, where a motorcycle taxi driver was slumped over the handlebars of his bike and leaned against a streetlight. When he saw Bond approaching the man managed a guttural utterance, which might have been a question and tried to focus his eyes. Bond could smell cheap whiskey and Chaang beer from three paces away.

"Sorry, I need to borrow this," Bond said, and jerked the handlebars in a quick motion. The bike jerked, sending the driver sprawling to the pavement. Bond mounted the bike and revved the motor. "Well?" he said to Indira. "Are you coming?"

A moment later she was straddling the bike in much the same manner as she had straddled him in the hotel room that afternoon, her muscular thighs locked against the plastic and steel of the bike, as Bond steered down the neon maze of Sukhumvit Road, weaving in and out of gaps between cars and pouncing whenever the opportunity presented itself to accelerate, rocketing through intersections.

"Do you have him?" Bond called over his shoulder.

"Pink cab. 1132. Two o'clock," Indira said into his ear. Bond picked up the cab she was referring to. It was gliding into a bus lane, earning a bleating cry from the shambling, overfilled vehicles held up behind it. A moment later Breckinridge sprang from the cab and made a beeline toward a small sidestreet.

"Hold on," Bond said tightly, then cranked the handlebars, steering the bike through three lanes of jerking, honking traffic, then caught the edge of a driveway ramp up onto the sidewalk. He made it a good half block before the sidewalk was too heavily obstructed by food vendors and the cheap plastic tables and chairs they set out for their customers for Bond to keep using the bike with any degree of safety. He skidded to a halt inches from a cart serving grilled pork skewers, earning a sour look from the old woman manning the coals.

"Looks like we're on foot from here," he said and began climbing off the bike.

"He went into Club Vertigo," Indira said as she dismounted the bike without the slightest trace of modesty or sheepishness at what her evening gown was surely displaying ever so briefly to the seated customers. "Second building on the soi." She pointed down the sidestreet.

"Perfect," Bond said. "I could use a proper drink."

The interior of Club Vertigo was throbbing and strobing with colored lights and the ear-muffling sound of a live band that had set up in the corner of the club's massive, open floor plan. The music was unremarkable, but the front-woman and her back up dancers, clad in sexed-up navy uniforms—complete with four-inch stilettos, short-shorts, and white garrison caps—went a long way toward earning the audience's goodwill.

Bond muscled his way to the bar and ordered a martini for himself and brandy Manhattan for Indira. The cute bartender who looked no older than nineteen giggled and waied at Bond's dinner jacket, but no one else seemed to notice the incongruity of his outfit. The club's mixture of alcohol, music, and sex served as an effective distraction.

"Did anyone comment on our eveningwear?" Indira asked as Bond handed her the Manhattan. She'd seized one of the rare high-top tables near the center of the floor. This type of real estate came at a premium in a club like this, but a woman who looked like Indira Manyam had a way of making people embrace the angels of their nature.

"I'm not sure anyone noticed," he called out over the band's wobbly cover of A-Ha's _Take On Me_. "If anything, we got our drinks faster. "

"That's the nice thing about Bangkok," she answered loudly enough for him to hear. "No one's ever overdressed or underdressed."

"Where's our man?"

Indira gestured toward a table on the opposite side of the room as theirs, near the band. "And he has a guest. Maybe Taylor feels a bit spirited tonight." She let out a bitter laugh as Bond sized up Breckinridge and his guest. She was a lean, Asian woman. She was beautiful, he could see that even at this distance. The stage lights shifted from red to green, and in the less severe lighting he could see her better. Bond felt a tightening across the back of his neck. She'd changed her hairstyle since they'd spent the night together, but it was unmistakably Liyani Fazura.

"He's going to need to be very spirited if he's with her," Bond said over the music.

"You know her?"

"She tried to kill me last night."

Indira stared at him a moment, "Well, some dates go better than others."

"Today's was a definite improvement."

Indira threw him a smile, then turned her attention back to the couple on the other side of the room. "What the hell is he up to?"

They sipped their drinks and did their best to meld with the rest of the crowded club. Indira was right, Bond noted during one of his periodic sweeps of the club, being inconspicuous in a place like this was pointless with the assortment of humanity on display. Around them there were drunken backpackers in dirty cargo shorts and threadbare tank tops huddled over cheap beer Middle Eastern tourists in cheap T-shirts with dumb sayings on them (freshly purchased from the countless dealers that flanked Sukhumvit Road, no doubt), South Asian patrons in tight-fitting jeans and boots, seemingly oblivious to Thailand's tropical climate, Western expatriates—many working in the newly-flush financial industry-in suits or sometimes simply blazers and khakis. A couple in eveningwear was barely worth a notice.

And there was no reason to bother a notice, not with the live band's sexy sailors, the impossibly-slim waitresses in their cheerleader outfits complete with trainers, and the bar girls in their jean shorts and halter tops and high heels. The club's patrons were talking among themselves, shouting over the music, laughing, spastically dancing, or gesticulating in efforts to communicate past a language barrier with whatever Thai women they'd been fortunate enough to lure to their table or their side.

The band finished _Take On Me_ and launched into another cover that Bond didn't recognize. Breckinridge and his companion continued to feign pleasant conversation. Bond noticed that they hardly touched their drinks.

"If we had better light I could try for a photo," Indira said into his ear. "Facial Recognition might come up with something."

As if hearing her, Breckinridge's gaze turned their way and his body abruptly stiffened.

"We're made," Bond said tensely.

Not taking his eyes off them, Breckinridge slid off his seat and began pushing his way through the crowd toward the door. Liyani backed away from the table and eased into a gaggle of waitresses.

"I'll take the woman," Indira called to him, but Bond was already heading to intercept Breckinridge, weaving through the scattering of tables, knocking aside patrons and spilling drinks. People cursed him, but he could barely make out what they were saying over the music, and his attention was fixed solely on Breckinridge, who was nearly out the door.

A hand grabbed him from behind. Bond didn't bother to turn around, just grabbed it and twisted the wrist. He barely registered the cry of pain from behind him. Bond sprinted the last few feet to the doorway, spilled out onto the sidewalk. The music dimmed behind him as the door to the club slowly closed, and was overtaken by the cacophony of the street. He whipped his head around, and spotted Breckinridge rounding the corner to Sukhumvit. Bond jogged after him—fast enough to close the distance, but not yet a run that would draw attention.

Breckinridge had fallen into a loose crowd of western tourists who were loudly, drunkenly debating the merits of Patpong versus Soi Cowboy. It was bad fieldwork—the tourists were in jeans and shorts—but the man was in a panic, and Bond wanted to keep him that way. He didn't try and disguise his approach, but moved in like destroyer penning in a submarine. Breckinridge saw him over his shoulder and broke into a run. Bond followed.

Breckinridge went straight for a stairway to the Skytrain, shoving people out of his way as he did so, and Bond nimbly sidestepped his debris. He reached the top of the steps in time to see Breckinridge vault over the turnstile, leaving an unarmed security guard stunned into motionlessness. Bond followed, barely clearing the hurdle, amazed that he did, and bolted up the stairs to the platform. He saw Breckinridge clear the top and disappear around the corner, took it himself in one long bound, and immediately felt a fist smash into his kidney.

Bond doubled over as pain roiled through his bowels, but only gave it a moment. Breckinridge had him by the collar and was forcing him back toward the railing with enough momentum to send him over the edge. Bond let him have a few feet, then planted his feet and tensed his body, becoming as immovable as one of the steel beams that held the platform in place. Now momentum worked against Breckinridge, sending him pivoting around Bond and slamming backward into the railing. Bond threw a solid punch into the man's face, feeling the nose break under his fist, then followed with a shot to the stomach, and watched him double over.

Bond grabbed Breckinridge's collar and yanked him up. The man writhed like a cat, slipping out of the coat and bolting past Bond to the edge of the platform. Bond spun in time to see him leap onto the tracks. A spotlight captured him, and he stood frozen, staring at the massive, white wall that was the oncoming train. Less than a second later, even before the sound of horn and the squealing brakes could reach the eardrums of Bond and the horrified crowd on the platform, Breckinridge was scooped up, then ground down beneath the heaving cab.

The crowd surged to the edge of the platform. Amid the gasps and cries and screams, it was easy for Bond to slip away. He found Indira waiting on the sidewalk near the club. She was slightly disheveled, her hair working loose of the elegant coif with stray strands making an indistinct halo.

"I lost her!" she fumed. "Bloody cow had better shoes for running than I did!"

"That's all right," Bond said, panting slightly to replace his wind. "I suspect this will help us out." He held up the hotel key card he'd found in the inside pocket of Breckinridge's coat.

Indira's eyes went from the card back to Bond. "We need to move fast. Before he figures out he lost that and decides to rabbit again."

Sirens wailed in the distance and grew louder. "I think we have a little time," Bond said.

15

Breckinridge, as it happened, had a taste for the easy life when he was away from his cover as a street-level NGO. His key card took Bond and Indira to a spacious suite in the Centara Grand Hotel—a multicolored dagger of a building that anchored Bangkok's tony Ratchaprasong shopping district. One full wall was curved glass that overlooked the glittering mega-shopping malls, and the turgid red slough of taillights weaving between them.

"He made that bloody well easy," Indira commented upon spying his open laptop.

"I doubt that easy," Bond said reproachfully as the screen woke up beneath Indira's touch and displayed a prompt for a biometric login.

"Damn!" Indira fumed. "A password I could have dealt with. I have password-cracking software in my phone. What are we going to do now? We can't very well retrieve one of his fingers or eyeballs from the mess he left at the Skytrain station. Have you got any suggestions?"

Bond help up a finger in a _shushing_ gesture. His phone was already at his ear with the line ringing.

" _I truly wish I didn't have to take this call, Double-Oh Seven, but the phones will have your phone profile logged, so M will know regardless."_

"As it happens I need your expertise, Q," he said easily. "I need you to break through the biometric encryption on a laptop."

" _You know even if I do this you really are going to have to check in with M. The past day or so he's been, well…I'm not sure the word, but 'apoplectic' is a good start."_

"I'll soothe his troubled bow once we're done here, Q. But we need what's on this laptop, first."

" _You're not going to call him, are you?"_

"Q!" Bond was getting irritated.

" _All right, all right…"_ there was an exasperated sigh that Bond guessed could have been heard all the way on the firing range. _"Hold the phone up to the computer. Let me see it."_

"Right." Bond panned the phone's camera over the laptop.

"What are you doing?" Indira asked. "Who is that you're talking to."

"Tech support," Bond said before bringing the phone up again. "Did you get that?"

" _Yes,"_ Q's voice had a brittle undercurrent to it. _"Should be rather easy to crack, seeing as how I developed the security system for it. Do I even want to know about this?"_

"Do you?"

" _I'll get the summary from M, later. Hold on a moment…"_

Bond held. A few seconds later, the screen flickered and showed the desktop. "That's it," Bond said. "You're a genius, Q."

" _Spare me the flattery, Double-Oh Seven. Call M."_ And he rang off.

Indira was already sifting through the laptop's files.

"Anything of note?" Bond asked, peering over her shoulder.

"Well, well, well," she said softly. "You may find this of interest." She tapped the laptop's touchpad and the bio-page of an MI6 Hostile Subject Dossier expanded to fit the screen. In the photograph field on the right-hand side Bond saw two full-on facial shots of a severe-looking Asian woman in a headscarf. A moment later the features coalesced in Bond's mind he could see Liyani Fazura. "It seems we found your mystery conquest," Indira said tartly.

"Shanti Ernawati," Bond read. "Malaysian—well, she didn't lie about that-connected to Jemaah Islamiyah…" he read further. "When that group got smashed she seems to have linked up with Abu Sayef. Connected to seven successful terrorist attacks, and multiple thwarted or aborted attacks in the past twelve years."

"Taylor had interesting taste in women. At least you weren't aware she was a terrorist when you slept with her."

"In fairness, it did become clear pretty immediately afterward."

"I'm not sure I want to know…now what's this?" She sifted around in a sheaf of .pdf documents. "They're Russian."

"Bring that one up," Bond pointed to the screen. Indira expanded it, revealing another, older Hostile Subject report. The picture in the file showed a round, slightly flabby face with broad, Slavic features in the center of which rested small, mean, piggy eyes.

"I recognize him," Bond said. "Nicolai Butavsky. I was sent to Monrovia to smash a criminal network trafficking in stolen Russian plutonium two months ago. He was in the briefing dossier, but he never showed in Monrovia. Got delayed in Moscow. It was the only thing that saved him."

Indira looked at him, the blood draining from her face. "Was he…was he an enforcer? The muscle, or…"

"He was the technician," Bond answered. "For the device that would take the plutonium. Former explosives expert with _Spetznaz._ "

Indira let out a long breath. "Breckinridge has his contact information…there are chat logs…"

"Breckinridge was putting a dirty-bomb technician in touch with a South Asian terrorist," Bond said grimly.

"My god…" Indira said softly as she sifted through more files on the computer. Bond drifted off and inspected the rest of the hotel room. Breckinridge had travelled lightly, with only a small overnight bag as luggage. There were a few light, button-down shirts laid out on the bed and sock pairs folded into balls in the bag nestled around carefully-rolled boxer shorts. Bond snorted derisively: he had no time for men who wore boxer shorts. They were too much like a child's pajamas.

"There are shipping bills in here, too," Indira said.

"What was being shipped?"

"It's not…I think it's a travel plan. Yes, these are a ship's travel route. The _Bayangan Hitam_ …looks like it's flagged out of Indonesia. Owned by Palco Shipping out of Sohar, Oman."

"That must be how they're smuggling the bomb, " Bond said as he looked through the bathroom and checked out Breckinridge's toiletries. Like the baggage, his toilet kit was light and spare: toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, razor, cologne. No medications that might identify him. Very professional. "What's the travel schedule?"

"It's still in Sohar, I think…" Bond heard her tapping the more keys. He moved to the closet. Nothing was hung, so he went to work on the safe. Hotel safes were notoriously easy to crack—most had a master key slot in case the guest forgot what number he programmed into the lock-but Breckinridge would have had no reason to fear someone searching his room this thoroughly. The lockpick multi-tool sewn into his belt made short work of the safe's master-key lock and he opened up the small door. "Looks like it puts off in about two days."

"That doesn't give us much time," Bond said as he sifted through the safe's contents. He found Breckinridge's passport, a .380 Sig/Sauer pistol which Bond unloaded, and some assorted jewelry.

"But none of this make sense!" Indira pushed away from the laptop and turned to Bond. "Breckinridge maybe be a venal, sexist, prig…"

"Been," Bond corrected. "Past tense."

Indira gave him an exasperated look. "But it doesn't explain why he's assisting with a nuclear attack. That's not simply treason, it's…I don't even have the words. And it doesn't explain why he framed me. What does that have to do with detonating a dirty bomb? What does he get out of any of it? And where is he getting the resources for any of this? I'd know he was misusing funds or establishing a black budget. There must be someone else. Someone behind him."

"There is," Bond said darkly, as he inspected the silver ring he'd found—a silver ring, unremarkable save for the small engraving of an octopus.

16

The red eye flight arrived in Muscat at seven-twenty in the morning local time. Bond rented a car and made the two-hour drive to Sohar under a clear blue sky and atop shimmering, sweltering pavement. The port was easy enough to find. It was a long, curving tentacle reaching into the Gulf of Oman. Palco Shipping was located near the tip of the tentacle, the most distant point, and the most private.

They poked around the main building a bit, hands on their guns, prepared to either talk fast for shoot faster depending upon how things worked out. They ended up doing neither, finding the main building—a collection of large, bland, rectangles—empty and locked. Beyond it stood two massive cranes that loomed over a seemingly endless city of immense shipping containers. With their bright colors and meticulous stacking they resembled nothing so much as the building blocks of some gigantic and very meticulous child. Beyond the mountain range of containers, the great, black hulk of the _Bayangan Hitam_ devoured the horizon.

"What's the container number?" Bond asked.

"A-two-zero-six-eight-four-two-two."

"Let's have a look, then," Bond made toward the containers.

"It could take hours," Indira complained.

"Enough time for someone to show up, then," Bond replied.

"They won't be happy with a couple foreigners poking about."

"They'll be even less happy to know they're transporting a dirty bomb."

Indira jogged to catch up with him. They were walking into the maze of containers, now and the sun began to disappear as they passed beneath high towers of containers. "If this organization—this Spectre—really is behind everything, they're sure to have security."

"They always do. But we're out of options at this point. England's relations with the Arab world are ice-cold right now, thanks to Muqab's assassination. Oman is hardy going to turn their port upside down on our say-so. I doubt they're even taking the FM's phone calls."

"This is insane, Bond," Indira said exasperatedly. "Is this how it's done in the Double-Oh Branch?"

"As a matter of fact," Bond said as he craned his neck to read the numbers stenciled on the containers, "it is."

"And here I thought you all put some actual thought into your operations."

Bond faced her. "Here's what you don't understand about being a double-oh: you're on your own. No teammates. No diplomatic channels to the local government. You're totally alone and totally expendable. And when you operate in that place, there comes a point where the only thing left to do is to walk right into the dragon's teeth. That's why you're there: because if there had been another way, they would have tried it."

Indira said nothing, but turned away somewhat abashed. She began scanning the containers on her side. They continued that way in a tense silence for about fifteen minutes until Indira pointed to a container at ground level a few rows away.

"There."

"At least they made it easy for us," Bond mused as he double-checked the shipping number.

"We don't have to climb," Indira said.

"It's not locked, either," Bond noticed. "How very considerate." He wrestled with the heavy twist-locks, forcing them out of their latches and opening the huge metal doors.

The inside of the container was pitch black for a moment then quickly lit up as a motion-sensitive fluorescent light. The box was empty except for a large brushed-steel case, roughly the size of a footlocker, but much deeper. It stood almost a meter and half off the floor.

"I rather suspect we've found it," Bond mused.

"Great what do we do now?"

"Now," Bond said, stepping into the echoing cargo container, "we take a look." He circled the device, noting its hinges and latches, but seeing no tripwires or obvious booby-traps.

"Jesus, Bond, should we be this close to the thing?" Indira said from the doorway of the container.

"If this is the same type as the one we were after in Monrovia, the nuclear material is safely contained." He grasped the box's lid and looked over at Indira. Her face was deathly pale in the fluorescent light. "If it's not, we've already been severely irradiated, so…" He yanked the lid open.

Indira's whole body flinched.

Bond inspected the contents. "Good news," he said, "it seems we'll live a bit longer." Inside the box was an olive-green warhead suspected in a homemade cradle. A poorly-stenciled red star was emblazoned on its side.

"Is that…"

"Yes. Probably stripped from a decommissioned ballistic missile."

"That's significantly more than a dirty bomb," Indira said, peering into the box, sweeping aside errant stands of her hair that stuck to her cheeks in the heat. "That could erase a city."

"And Karachi's just on the other side of the Gulf from here." Bond looked closely at the warhead in its cradle, tilted his head to see better. "Strange," he said.

"What is?"

Bond straightened up. "There's no detonator. Nothing to set off the warhead."

"No?" Indira looked into the box.

"Not even an explosive device to scatter the warhead's radioactive material."

"Maybe that's why the container was unlocked. Maybe they haven't gotten it yet."

"Why would they have loaded it in the container without—" Then they heard the distant crunch of tires on gravel.

"Someone's here!" Indira drew her pistol. Bond ran to the doors of the container and pulled them shut.

"It could be a security guard. Or a dock foreman." Bond fumbled with his watch.

Indira's head was cocked to the slight gap between the container's doors.

"They've stopped," she whispered. "But I think I hear footsteps."

Bond clasped the Omega, then slowly, quietly closed the lid of the bomb.

"I think they…" Indira stopped, jerking her head, but Bond noticed it, too: the acrid taste of the air. Like almonds.

" _Gas!"_ Indira pointed to the air conditioning unit mounted into the far side of the container.

"Hurry!" Bond whispered. "We have to…take…our chances…" But his brain was already growing fuzzy. He drew the Walther, but it seemed impossibly heavy. He stumbled toward the exit.

Indira threw herself gracelessly into the doors, falling out of the container. Bond staggered after her into the burning daylight, hitting the gravel drive on his knees. Gulping fresh, uncontaminated air, he noted Indira's unconscious body and the half-dozen people standing above them.

The one in front was Nicolai Butavsky. He pointed a big pistol at Bond's head. There was movement in his peripheral vision. Bond looked around just in time to see Livani Fazura aka Shanti Ernawati's kick before it impacted the side of his head. He fell into darkness.

17

Bond came to on a plastic sleeping mat in a cold room, and that was the extent of what he could ascertain for several moments. The world was shifting as if on a gimbal and pain ran in a cold line from one temple to the other. His cheek throbbed. Groaning, slightly, Bond managed to sit up. The world shifted again, and the headache subsided. He massaged his temples, and then surveyed his surroundings.

He was in a plain, stone room. There were no amenities or fixtures that might suggest it was designed to be a prison cell, aside from the steel door and the bars embedded in the window at the opposite wall. Sunlight sifted through the bars, and Bond realized he could hear the faint roil of surf. He slowly got up, less shaky than he'd expected, thankfully, and walked over to that window.

Beyond the crosshatching of the bars, Bond saw turrets and minarets, all encompassed by the embrace of fortified walls. In the center of the fort was a large, new-looking structure, a series of blocky segments with long corridors branching off around the compound. In the center of the structure was a large glass dome, like a greenhouse or aviary. Bond wondered what was important enough to desecrate a hundreds-of-years-old fort to build. Beyond the far wall, past the pointed emplacements that ran along its top, he could see the Gulf of Oman in a swirl of white and cerulean blue. The air smelled of salt, and he felt strangely revitalized, taking it in.

The door clanged behind him, and Bond spun, crouched slightly, prepared or whatever punishment came next. Butavsky stood in the doorway, in a pair of 5.11 tactical pants and lightweight shirt. He held a long-barreled Walther automatic casually, at hip level, but still pointed at Bond. Behind him were a couple of bearded, thick-armed man similar to the ones Bond had tangled with in Kuala Lumpur. They carried what appeared to be compact AK-47 variants at the low-ready position: buttstocks in the pockets of their shoulders, but the barrels pointed downward in a safe direction. Bond knew better than to think that he had any advantage-it would take only a second to raise them into firing position.

"You come," Butavsky barked through a thick Slavic accent. "You come with us now." Bond regarded him and the men flanking him and shrugged.

"If you're going to insist."

Butavsky led the way, while the two other men trailed at a great enough distance to make it impossible for Bond to make any kind of move for escape before they cut him down with small arms fire. As it was, Bond was curious where they were taking and him and what it would reveal.

They walked through a spiraling stone corridor that wound its way down to the base of building, and finally to a sturdy set of doors that had clearly been built into the stone of the fort recently. There were still traces of powder flecked on the hinges. Butavsky threw the doors open with a flourish that seemed disproportionate to the bland, almost sterile, conference room that was beyond. The walls had been painted a plain white, and the center of the room was devoted to an oblong conference table that looked to have been plucked from a web site that sold overpriced office furniture for international corporations. Bond felt a rush of relief at the sight of Indira Manyam sitting near the head of the table.

"James!" It was something between a sigh and an exclamation, and she stood up. Bond saw a set of hands push her back into her chair, and when he entered the room, he saw that they belonged to Shanti Ernawati. The woman had traded the sheath of an evening gown for the beige utility of BDUs and thick-soled desert boots. No wonder she'd put him out with one kick, Bond thought ruefully.

"Put him there," Shanti gestured to the chair opposite Indira. Butavsky gestured to it with his gun, and Bond sat without resisting. Escape was about opportunity, and this situation—the automatic weapons, the confined space—didn't afford any. Instead he settled in as if he was in M's office to receive a mission briefing, and gave Indira a wan smile.

"I hope your check-in went smoother than mine."

She shrugged slightly. "No one kicked me unconscious."

"Shut up!" Shanti snapped, her face devoid of any of the grace, beauty or seduction she had once deployed to great effect. Now it was just a mask of disdain and contempt, twisted and ugly. She thrust a finger at the large LED screen bolted to the stone wall. "This is for you. It's probably the last courtesy anyone will ever grant you, so you should pay attention. Also, Nicolai will shoot you in one of your joints if you don't. Won't you, Nicolai?"

The big Russian grinned with unsuppressed bloodlust and waved his gun in their direction like a child's cap pistol. "Bang bang!"

"Do I have your attention now?"

"Undivided," Bond said, and was rewarded with a poisonous look from Shanti. Then she stabbed at a long remote control. The screen flashed to life, and a cylindrical camera mounted beneath the screen abruptly swung around to face them like a well-trained pet. The high-resolution signal showed a dramatically-lit room accented by stainless steel and sleek, black computer terminals. Slowly, a figure stepped from the shadows and into a shaft of harsh, fluorescent light. The man Bond had been expecting.

"Hello James," Blofeld said.

18

"I was so worried that I'd miss you," the man said with his characteristic hollow avuncularity that barely concealed the menace beneath, smiling his equally empty smile that stretched like an unfamiliar exercise beneath eyes that held only hatred. "I had them set this up. It was wasn't easy, James, running all that fiber-optic line to a fourteenth-century fort, but I think if we have the opportunity to chat just one more time, then all that difficulty will be worth it."

"You might have just sent a card, Franz," Bond said. "Saved yourself a bit of trouble. After all, it must be busy work, engineering a war between India and Pakistan."

Blofeld's eyes went black, and the smile collapsed like a flimsy banner. "I told you that's not my _name_ anymore!"

"Very well, Ernst," Bond said making a mental note that he'd gotten under the man's skin.

"That's better. We should address each other like the men we've become, and not the boys we were."

"What's he talking about?" Indira whispered. "You know him?"

"It's a long story," Bond said. "And a rather improbable one. Indira Manyam, meet Ernst Stavro Blofeld, founder, feared leader, and Chief Executive Officer of Spectre, the most powerful and dangerous criminal you've never heard of."

Bond saw Indira's face slowly brighten with understanding. "You were the High-Value Target who escaped from Belmarsh prison last fall."

Blofeld beamed a genuine smile this time. "The same, dear lady." He looked at Bond with a reproaching gaze. "It was such a mistake for MI6 not to remand me to a black site somewhere—I'm sure the Americans must have a few they've kept around. I suppose you just didn't know who you could trust."

Bond felt a light sting of humiliation. Of course MI6 had agitated for dumping Blofeld in one of the Americans' foreign hells—they'd even considered Guantanamo Bay—but in the end, such a move was considered by the luminaries who comprised the particular subcommittee to deal with this issue to be too politically controversial. When Belmarsh went up in flames, they called it an epic failure on the part of Britain's Incarceration Services. "We caught you once, Blofeld," Bond said easily, tamping down his irritation. "We'll catch you again."

"I don't think so," Blofeld mocked. "My personal vendetta with you is behind me, James. It was a silly indulgence to begin with. Distracted me from the work at hand. I won't be letting you get that close to me again."

"What work at hand," Indira demanded. "What's the meaning of this? Of all this?"

"The work," Blofeld explained, "is the work of my organization: transnational crime, facilitating terrorism, thwarting the efforts of espionage agencies that seek to expose us, extorting governments and world leaders… our tentacles are dipped in illicit enterprises around the globe."

"Tentacles," Bond said. "That explains the logo." Blofeld gave Bond a poisonous look, then continued.

"Unfortunately, one of our major sources of revenue became imperiled recently. It seems the West is increasingly placing strings upon the mountains of cash they've been handing out in anti-terrorism assistance. One of those strings is that they expect governments to crack down on the trafficking of opiates. I understand they have quite an epidemic in the US.

"We had thought that we'd found a partner of like minds in Foreign Minister Muqam, and that the supply routes for the heroin we move out of Afghanistan would be secure. Alas, like all Pakistanis, his alliances proved a bit too flexible for our comfort. And so he had to be removed."

"And you framed me to do it!" Indira spat.

"Oh, don't be upset, dear. You were only a piece in a larger game. We could ensure Muqam's replacement would be more amenable to our offers of partnership, but we needed to be certain that he didn't prove as fickle in his commitment to us as Muqam. We needed some way to ensure that the promise of the West's billions in aid wouldn't sway the assets we have in place in the Pakistani government."

"So you manufactured a crisis," Bond said, the truth dawning on him like the first spray of water from a cold shower. "Something that would discredit the West."

Blofeld smiled gleefully. "Exactly. We've had Taylor Breckinridge in place for some time now, and he gave us access to his computer systems. We knew that you, Ms. Manyam, had been targeting Muqam because of your family history. Well, with this at our disposal—such a perfect player in the game—we couldn't not frame you for the assassination of Muqam. It was also a good test run of our impersonation software. It took our software engineers three years to perfect it, but in the end I think it was worth the wait."

As Bond watched, the blood drained from Indira's face. "I was the perfect patsy," she said quietly.

"You were," Blofeld said. "James wouldn't have worn his vengeance on his sleeve so openly. But then, perhaps that's why you're not a Double-Oh."

Bond watched as the taunt landed, but Indira said nothing. "All right, Blofeld, you've explained the assassination, but what about the rest of it. How do you propose to manage your relationship with bent Pakistani government officials after a dirty bomb goes off? The anti-terrorism response will be epic. The sheer number of drones, and commando teams and overwatch flights will decimate your supply routes. You'll be competing with Special Forces teams for space on the road."

Blofeld affected a look of feigned surprise. "Oh? Haven't you figured out that part yet, James? I'm disappointed. I'm told you saw the device. You know it can't go off. Why do you think that is?"

"Because you don't want a bombing," Bond said caustically. "You only want the crisis."

"Precisely," Blofeld said slowly. "And that is where the late Mr. Breckinridge comes in so handy. After all, he is the nexus between Shanti and Nicolai," Blofeld gestured through the screen to Butavsky.

"So it looks like an MI6 operation that went bad, that Breckinridge lost control of," Bond said. "And the bomb got loose."

"Very good, James. While you were sleeping, the _Bayangan Hitam_ left port. In an hour or so, I will contact the Pakistani government through a cut-out security consulting firm and provide them with its location and the information from Breckinridge's laptop—we'll tell them it was culled from WikiLeaks, or some such. They will be able to intercept the device before it can be detonated, and I will be the Pakistani government's new best friend. They're relationship with the West, however," Blofeld pulled an exaggerated frown. "I'm afraid that relationship will become rather frosty for the foreseeable future."

"They'll blame England—and by extension the West—for very nearly allowing a dirty bomb to go off on their shores and cease all cooperation with anti-terrorism initiatives. And your opium routes will be secured."

"That's hideous," Indira breathed. "You killed so many people…disgraced me…allowed a nuclear weapon to get loose in the Middle East, just to protect your drug trade."

On the screen, Blofeld's face hardened. "I protected my enterprise. It spans the world and earns billions of dollars for those who are a part of it. People like you and James and Muqab and your masters, you play your games of West and Middle East and ideology and theology, and what do you have to show for it? What have you built? A world in a state of perpetual terror? An incurable epidemic of chaos? Hideous, my dear lady. No, what Spectre has accomplished is true, unmitigated success. I think, perhaps, you've forgotten what it looks like."

"All right, Blofeld," Bond shifted in his chair. "It's an ingenious plan, I grant you. But what now? Why tell us this? Simply to gloat?"

Blofeld seemed to think it over. "Well…yes, that's mostly the reason. It _was_ quite a coup, you have to admit. It would be a shame not to share it with someone."

"I find it hard to believe you kept us alive just for that."

"Well, killing Ms. Manyam would indeed be a waste. She may someday prove a valuable piece of currency when dealing the Pakistanis, should they become recalcitrant again. The fugitive who killed their Foreign Minister might smooth over any rough patches."

"If you think I'll go willingly," Indira said levelly, "or that you can contain me easily, your men are about to learn a very painful, very fatal lesson."

Blofeld's eyes tightened. "Careful, my dear. We don't necessarily need you to be alive-or in full possession of your cognitive faculties—to be useful."

"And me?" Bond asked. "I can't imagine I'm of any value to you. So what's it to be, then? A bullet in the back of the head? Some light torture for old time's sake?"

"Oh, I have a more useful plan for you, James. You see, what you may not realize is that I tend to be a bit of a dilettante, and lately I've become rather taken with herpetology—the study of reptiles. Would you like to see my latest hobby?"

The camera abruptly swung around to reveal a large, greensish pond, then it zoomed in on a group of some half-dozen or so sleek creatures cutting the water.

" _Varanus salvitor,"_ Blofeld's voice came from behind the camera as it zoomed in and out. "Otherwise known as the common Southeast Asian water monitor. Generally speaking, they're relatively even-tempered, but I've had a few of my biologists tinker with splicing their genes with those of their bigger brother, the Komodo dragon. I think you'll be impressed with the results. Watch."

The camera followed two of the streamlined lizards as they swam with powerful flicks of their meter-long tails, arriving at a small embankment, which they climbed with long-taloned feet. The vegetation lining the embankment rustled and expelled a large, squat pig with curling tusks.

"That's an Indonesian babirusa, or 'deer-pig,' as they're sometimes called." Blofeld said with barely contained excitement. "Okay, now watch this part."

For the next three minutes, they watched in silence as the two monitors attacked the pig with a savagery that was shocking, even for the animal kingdom. Soon, they were joined by two more lizards—each about a meter and a half in length—that tore into the flailing pig's belly, spilling its entrails about the grass.

When the camera finally pulled away from the blood-soaked carnage and returned to framing Blofeld, the man wore an expression of near-sexual glee. "Well? What do you think, James?"

"What _possibly_ would you do that for?" Bond asked incredulously.

"As a matter of fact, I have a very good reason, James. Some very wealthy men with interests in resorts in Bali are very unhappy with the amount business they're losing to the resorts in Thailand—Koh Samui, Phuket, Krabe. They're paying me a lot of money to drive business away from those places in a way that doesn't deter tourism from the rest of Southeast Asia."

"And man-eating lizards were the best idea you came up with?"

Blofeld shrugged. "A Disney resort was nearly bankrupted when a child was eaten by an alligator on their grounds. You know, as man encroaches into their natural habitats, these sorts of confrontations with wild animals become more and more common."

"You really are mad," Indira said.

"Perhaps, my dear. But I'm also rather out of time, and I'm afraid I have to end this call. I look forward to meeting you in person, Ms. Manyam." His gaze shifted to Bond. "James…I thank you for helping to sustain my new pets. They'll need their strength for the trip to Thailand."

Bond felt hands grab him by shoulders and drag him out of the chair.

"James!" Indira shouted, but men we dragging her away too.

19

The four men dragging Bond through the pre-fab corridors of the fort's new building—it's central hub—were not in uniform, but were nonetheless of a type: their hair was long and tied back in Japanese-influenced topknots that had suddenly (and improbably, in Bond's opinion) come back into style, and were matched by heavy beards that were cultivated and styled after warriors in television shows about mystical knights and Vikings. Their muscles bulged from obsessive workouts, supplemented with regular doses of steroids and human growth hormone, and their swollen arms were covered in tribal tattoos from people and places they'd never seen. They wore BDUs under light Kevlar combat vests spattered with magazine and equipment pouches.

But what Bond paid the most attention to were the weapons they carried: H&K VP9s in drop-rig holsters strapped to their thighs and unslung compact SA vz. 58 rifles in their gunhands. It was a cut-down AK-47 variant chambered for 5.56mm NATO round, with a shortened barrel and folding stock. Excellent for close-quarters battle if you weren't too particular about where your rounds went. Bond remembered that the guards at Blofeld's cyberwarfare compound in the deserts of Morocco carried the same rifles. He must have gotten a discount for buying in bulk.

"You do realize that you're all about ten minutes away from a drone strike that will vaporize this entire compound, don't you?" It was a weak lie, but good enough to test the waters. "My government isn't going to reign in their response jut because two of their operatives are on site."

The men surrounding him said nothing.

Bond tried again: "So, precisely what decision-points brought you to a place where you're feeding a man to genetically-engineered lizards? Blackwater let you go? Triple Canopy not giving you enough latitude in the killing of civilians?"

The foremost guard spun abruptly and slammed Bond against the corridor wall. It felt flimsy, like particle board or plaster. He rammed his forearm under Bond's chin and into his throat, bringing his face close enough so that Bond could smell the dull stink of chewing tobacco on his breath and see the stains of tobacco-spittle in his beard—just above the stenciling on the upper edge of his body armor: Fussenegger.

"You best behavior yourself, mister," he said in a thick accent from America's deep south. "The chief didn't say nothin' 'bout you being able to walk when you put you in the cage."

"You could try that," Bond said easily. "And then lay odds on whether or not you're the next entree on the menu. I know 'the boss' better than you do, and if there is one thing he doesn't like, it's disobedience."

Fussenegger 's eyes clouded with confusion at the prospect, then roughly forced Bond back into the corridor. "Just keep it up, Limey queer."

Bond pretended to stumble so he could twist his body a bit and pocket the folding knife he'd slipped out of Fussenegger 's own pocket—because if there was one uniting feature of security contractors around the world, Bond knew, they all kept their folding knives in their hip pockets.

They came to a thick, glass door with a blaze-orange warning sticker on it. One of the other guards punched in a code on a stainless steel pad on the handle, and opened the door. No picking the lock, Bond noted. A blast of humidity hit him first, then he was forced through the doorway and Bond was looking at a massive, circular terrarium, topped by the glass dome he'd spotted from his cell. The terrarium had been designed to emulate a tropical terrain. Palm and citrus trees burst from the loamy earth, and scraggly grass covered the ground. A series of canals snaked throughout the area, joining in a half dozen places with a large, central pond. It had the same dislocating effect s a zoo exhibit—at once immersive and ersatz.

The guards manhandled Bond to a wide finger of land that jutted into the pond, then two men each took one of Bond's arms and forced his wrists into a set of handcuffs bolted into the thick trunk of a palm tree. Bond heard a slopping sound, and looked over his shoulder to see that the fourth guard had opened a plastic bucket pre-staged in a thatch of vegetation and as ladling bloody chunks of chicken into the water. "That's it, get 'em good and worked up," Fussenegger said as he slipped a pair of Oakley plastic-framed sunglasses over his eyes. Then he said to Bond, "You can get smart with them lizards, see what it gets you. Gonna be fun watching you scream." He punctuated his point, but kicking Bond's legs out from under him, forcing him to his knees and yanking his arms up over his head.

"Enjoy, asshole."

Bond watched over his shoulder as the men retreated back to the entry with no small amount of haste, their weapons sweeping the underbrush and canal banks until the door slammed and the electronic lock clicked loudly. A moment later, Bond saw a section of the wall beside the door slide down to reveal a long window. Squinting through the sunlight filtering through the skylight, Bond thought he could make out two figures behind the windows.

The humidity was oppressive. It was less than a minute since he was led into the room, and Bond could already felt perspiration ringing his neck and trickling down his back. He was glad he was still clad in the clothes he wore to Oman—a cotton short-sleeved shirt unbuttoned over a tan t-shirt and baggy cargos—and that Blofeld hadn't seen fit to provide him another sharkskin suit to wear.

Bond leaned into the trunk of the palm tree enough to block the view from the observation window behind him and conceal what he was doing. He hoped that the figures watching—likely Fussenegger and the other guards—were excited enough at the prospect of his gory death that they weren't paying attention to his movement. Or if they did notice, that they were overconfident enough to let him continue.

He unfolded the knife's blade. It was gratifyingly flat and thin, and about five inches long. Perfect for his use. He worked the tip beneath the metal base of the ring anchoring the handcuffs to the tree and sawed and pried at the sandpapery bark until ringlets of the tree's green flesh curled up around the metal. Bond pulled at the cuffs and was rewarded by feeling the ring dislodge slightly. With a satisfied grunt, Bond increased his efforts, sawing and pulling at intervals until sweat snaked from his hairline down his face, around his eyes and cheeks.

Then he heard the rustling. And the hissing.

He threw a fast look over his shoulder and saw three long shapes emerging from the waterline not three meters away from him. Their hides were striped and serrated with bands and fields of colored scales. They stepped slowly and deliberately, front feet moving in tandem with the opposite rear foot, grabbing the earth with inches-long, razor-like claws. Their small, triangular heads swept back and forth as they tasted the air and the blood-stained grass around them with their long, forked tongues.

Bond felt a primal fear blossom in his stomach, a cry of alarm from his brain's oldest regions telling him to flee as nothing had ever before. He fought the adrenaline surge that was causing his hands to shake and went back to the cuffs. They wiggled freely now, the ring barely holding. Bond funneled all his energy and all his fear into one concentrated pull. His biceps and triceps burned, and his shoulders felt like they would both dislocate. He let out a strangled cry as the muscle and bone and sinew of his body strained against the resistance.

And finally, the chains came loose, and Bond almost fell over backward. The metal ring was still embedded in the tree trunk, but only barely, and one last yank brought it free.

They had taken his hidden lockpick set from his belt, but left the belt, and that was all Bond needed to slip the narrow tongue of the buckle between the lock bar of the left cuff and the ratchet and swing the cuff open. As he repeated the process with the right cuff, he saw that the monitors had crawled even closer, cocking their heads in his direction and hissing, showing off rows of needle-sharp teeth. They had his scent. Beyond them, at the water's edge, a half dozen more shapes were emerging from the green water.

20

"He get out of them cuffs?" Fussenegger asked before dripping tobacco-laced spit into an empty plastic soda bottle. "How'd he get out of them cuffs?"

"Can't tell," Baker answered. The observation room was kept dark to better see the spectacle beyond the window. It reminded him, appropriately enough, of the reptile house at a zoo.

"Well he ain't getting far. He's gotta have almost ten of 'em coming up on him." Then the limey turned and faced them. It unnerved Fussenegger, even though he knew the glass wasn't meant to be one-way, and there was no reason the guy shouldn't be able to see them. Hell, knowing he was watching them watch him get torn apart was half the fun.

"What's he doing?" Baker asked.

"Fiddling with his watch, looks like."

Then the limey seemed to throw something, and Fussenegger was slammed by a tornado of broken glass.

21

The blast of the three explosive coins Bond had taped to the back of the Omega's case and band had startled the monitors enough for him to sprint past them and vault through the shattered-out observation window into the room beyond. In the dim light, he could make out two prone bodies, stunned, immobile, their faces torn to scarlet ribbons by the broken glass. He recognized the one on the left and dropped the folding knife on the twitching body.

"Thanks for the loan," he said and picked up the vz 58. "I'll take this off your hands." He grabbed three magazines out of the pouch on Fussenegger's vest and stuffed them in the side pockets on his cargos. He made for the corridor, then noticed a locking system mounted in the room's wall. He wasn't positive, but he had a pretty good idea what it was for. He turned the system off and then darted into the corridor and tested the door to the lizard exhibit. It opened easily. Bond propped it open and headed down the corridor.

Behind him, he heard scrabbling on the tile floor and hissing. Looking back, he saw a pair of two-meter long monitors slither into the observation room and hiss with what Bond could only assume was utter delight.

He set up against a corner and leaned the upper half of his body out from behind the cover, the vz 58 held out in front of him.

" _Breech! Breech! We got a breech!"_ Two guards were stationed at the end of the corridor and one was shouting into a headset while the other fell into a shooting crouch.

Too late, Bond pulled the trigger on his rifle reflexively, felt the little gun buck against the 5.56mm round's recoil and give a hellacious bark in the confined space. The shooter went down heavily and without grace. Bond sprayed fire at the second guard and put the man on the floor before he could even bring his gun to bear.

A door midway down the corridor flew open and automatic fire stuttered from the room beyond. Bond ducked back around the corner as small-arms rounds chewed up the wall where he had been hiding. He smelled plaster dust hot metal. A moment later the fire paused, and Bond strained his ringing ears to hear something, anything.

Footsteps. They were moving out of the room and rushing his position. It was potentially foolhardy, but also necessary. Hallways were a tactical nightmare hence their nickname in close quarters battle as "fatal funnels."

Without grenades, Bond didn't have any good options either, so he just darted out from behind cover, firing blindly. There were three of them this time. Two carried vz 58s like his, while the other had an MP5K submachine gun he held with two hands. All three wore uniform BDUs.

Bond saw it happen as if in slow motion: the one with the MP5K reacted first, bring his gun around to spray Bond with a lethal dose of 9mm fire while Bond's rifle was pointed at the lead man, the trigger breaking, the muzzle breathing fire, and the second man stepping out to get a clear shot, and with a suddenness and clarity he'd never experienced before, Bond knew he was dead.

The blur that was the second man coalesced into something tangible—a guard bringing his rifle around the bare inches necessary for a headshot. And then he twitched and shuddered just as Bond heard the racking cough of the submachine gun.

Bond threw himself sideways as his gun finished its arc and lined up with the last man—who'd just accidentally killed his teammate. Bond pulled the trigger three times, watched the MP5K ripped from the man's hands and two blossoming bullet holes appear in his chest.

It took seconds and by the end of it, three men were motionless on the ground.

Bond only had time to exhale when a huge shape exploded from the darkness of the doorway that had expelled the last three guards. Bond swung his gun around but something massive slammed into him, blotting out the light and pinning him to the wall. It took a second for his adrenaline-saturated brain to process the face he saw before him: Nikoli Butavsky. He tried to pull the gun around, but Butavsky had pinned the barrel to the wall with one massive forearm. A fist buried itself in Bond's stomach, driving the wind from him with a dull wheeze, and he slumped toward the floor.

Butavsky yanked at the rifle, and Bond only barely had the presence of mind to latch onto it with both hands, fingers working the magazine catch, so that when Butavsky wrestled it free from Bond, the curved magazine came free and flew across the room. Butavsky's inertia carried him backward and he fumbled with the gun, firing its sole remaining round into the ceiling.

Bond composed himself as best he could and adopted a fighting crouch, trying to will away the deep ache in his abdomen. Butavsky let out a roar of frustration and threw the empty rifle aside, then went for the big automatic on his hip. Bond lashed out with a snap kick that caught Butavsky's wrist as the gun cleared the kydex holster, sending it clattering away. Butavsky transitioned into a clumsy punch, which Bond backed beyond the range of. Butavsky put his head down and rushed him like a bull, slamming Bond back around the corner, sending them both sprawling. Bond tightened his body and rolled, letting Butavsky's inertia and weight roll him over Bond like they were children tumbling down a hill.

Slapping the ground with his hands, Bond propelled himself to his feet and spun around, using his nimbleness to his advantage, and threw a punch into Butavsky's throat while the man was still hauling himself up. Bond felt cartilage give way and the Russian's eyes suddenly went round as he abruptly lost the ability to breathe properly. Instinctively, one hand went to his throat. Bond used the moment to smash the man's nose with his fist, knowing the injury would partially blind him once his eyes swelled shut.

But Bond didn't intend the fight to last that long. As Butavsky processed this new damage, Bond brought his foot up and planted his sole on the other man's kevlar-lined chest plate, then lined up his shot and shoved forward with all his might. Butavsky toppled backward into the partially-open door to the observation room, which gave way beneath his weight and his bulk—all muscle and gear—dropped to the room's floor. Bond watched as he tried to get up, only to scream shrilly as a set of jaws clamped around one wrist. He looked uncomprehendingly with wide, bloodshot eyes at the prehistoric head that had his wrist in its maw. Then Bond saw a long, pattered body slither over him, like a leather sheet, as another monitor crawled over him from behind. Butavsky's cried were muffled by the great body of the lizard, but he lashed out blindly and spastically in a vain attempt to fight off the monsters that were now feeding on him. After a few seconds, his cries were drown out by the furious hissing of the lizards fighting one another for a piece of Butavsky's available flesh.

"Do svidanya," Bond said and headed back down the corridor. He scooped up another vz 58 off one of the guards he killed earlier, then noticed Butavsky's pistol on the floor and picked that up too. It was a long-barreled Walther PPQ with a ventilated slide—too nice a gun to leave behind. He tucked it in his waistband and set about searching the complex.

He found a communications room at the end of the corridor, and took a moment to use a computer workstation. He was just hitting ENTER when he felt the barrel of a gun press into his cheek.

"Don't even think of moving," came a French-accented voice. "Take your hands off the keyboard."

Bond did so, mentally reviewing his options. They consisted of getting shot or getting recaptured. Suddenly a blast echoed in the small room, and the guard spun away. Bond saw half the man's skull spattered on the cheap, plasterboard wall.

"It's so much easier when I don't have to aim around you," Indira said from the doorway, where she leveled a big pistol, her raven hair a thick curtain framing her face.

"Right now I'm very grateful for your marksmanship," Bond said. "How did you get free?"

"I gave my captors the eyes," she half-closed her eyes seductively and cocked her head, "and told them I'd do _whatever they wanted_ —" the words delivered breathlessly, "—if they wouldn't hurt me. Then when their pants were around their ankles I broke their necks."

"I'm beyond impressed."

"It was only two of them. In the body armor they weren't very dexterous. Once they put their guns down they were easy targets. The trick was getting them to put their guns down. Fortunately, men become stupid when sex is involved."

"We do at that," Bond stood from the computer console and handed her the rifle. "Here, take your marksmanship up to the next level."

"I'm doing fine with the pistol."

"A gentleman always offers a lady the automatic weapon."

"In that case…" she took the rifle. "What now?"

"You didn't happen to see any transportation, did you?"

"Some Range Rovers parked on the west side of the courtyard. I could see them from my cell."

"We're going to need to move fast," Bond said heading for the door. "For one thing, there are about a dozen hungry monitor lizards loose in the compound."

"What did you do?" Indira asked, her eyes wide with incredulity.

"I utilized the resources at hand."

They burst from the pre-fabricated portion of the fort into the blinding light of the fort's courtyard, just as the cries of terror and alarm began.

"Butavsky wasn't as filling as you'd expect, I suppose," Bond said when they reached a tan Range Rover.

"I don't even want to think about it," Indira said. Suddenly, automatic fire chattered in the distance and dust and gravel spattered them. One of the Range Rover's windows shattered. Bond spun and drew the PPQ, located a target maybe fifty yards away firing from the hip, and pulled the trigger reflexively. The PPQ's trigger break was so smooth and the reset so short it was less like he was making the gun go off as willing it to. The guard spun and fell.

"Must ask Q to get me one of these," Bond mused.

"Later!" Indira shouted and let lose a raking burst from her gun. Bond got into Range Rover and fired up the engine. Indira sent a second burst in the direction of the loose formation of guards near the far side of the fort, and then piled into the vehicle. Bond floored the accelerator, and the boxy SUV surged forward like a dog unleashed and devoured the distance to the vehicle gate.

" _Hold on!"_ Bond shouted as they hit the delta barrier set into the entrance at the vehicle gate. It was steel wedge that was hydraulically lifted and lowered, but it was angled to keep vehicles out, not in. Their Range Rover took the barrier as an enormous ramp, and sent the big vehicle on a low, flat arc to where it landed on packed earth with a spine-rattling crash which the padding of the seats and the shock absorbers did little to mitigate.

"Good god!" Indira exclaimed. Bond gave her a quick grin and steered the Range Rover onto asphalt and deep into the desert.

"So what's the plan?" Indira asked over the rumble of wind blowing through the shattered window.

"We put as much distance between us and them as possible."

"What about the bomb?"

Bond held up his wrist and showed off the Omega De Ville. "Taken care of," he said.

22

The captain and crew of the _Bayangan Hitam_ knew that the plan was scuttled when the _HMS Sutherland_ came up on their bow. The captain understood that his massive, slow freighter couldn't outmaneuver or outrun a frigate of the Royal Navy, so he cut the engines and shot himself in the head, trusting the Spectre operatives onboard to take care of the rest.

They put up a valiant defense against the boarding party of Royal Marines, but it was a brief one, and in the end the Marines had only two casualties—one bullet in the leg, and one injury by shrapnel from a ricochet—while, the Spectre team was totally eliminated. Once the smoke cleared, the Marines went about meticulously clearing the ship before receiving the order to inspect the source of the signal that was pinging annoyingly through the _Sutherland's_ radio room. They found the container they'd been briefed to expect, and, looped around one its handles, a very attractive Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean watch.

23

 **Vilamendhoo Island**

 **The Maldives**

Shanti Ernawati stepped out of her ocean villa and onto the pier, feeling a vague sense of satisfaction at the sharp _crack_ of her spiked heel against the pressure-treated wood. Her two guards—still somewhat punchy from their activities with her in the villa's wide bed—fell in behind her as obediently as affectionate Labradors. In all, things hadn't been so bad since Operation Blowback had collapsed. She'd evaded the majority of the blame, as Number One had chosen instead to make an example of his Chief of Security—a taciturn Afrikaaner who'd been responsible for the hiring and training of the various criminals, rogues, and mercenaries Spectre used to carry guns. The rest of the Executive Board had been horrified by the man's fate, but Shanti had already seen the monitor lizards devour a half dozen people at the fort, so it didn't faze her too much.

Still, she did wonder if she was still of use to the organization, or if she was simply too unimportant for Number One to eliminate right way. Perhaps her death was like the lowest item on a grocery list. She didn't know, and to a large extent she didn't care. She'd lived most of her life anticipating death—from Detachment 88, Indonesia's elite anti-terrorism team, or their American and Australian puppeteers, and now from Spectre.

It had made her appreciate what time she had and make the most of it. So when they'd been forced to flee Oman, she'd grabbed two guards and lit out for the resort, which she'd discovered when she studied the British spy. If she was going to lie low, best to do it in one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places on Earth in the company of two young, fit, and very willing men.

"Some dancing before the night," she said as she walked past the drinks cart left outside the villa—they'd wanted no distractions during their activities. "Best dancer wins a special prize from me. I think you'll like it. And the other will like—" She stopped as suddenly as if she'd walked into a wall. Standing before her was the British spy.

"You bitch," the spy whispered. "You took my fucking life away from me."

"Kill her!" Shanti barked, but she'd barely finished saying it when she heart the two sharp cracks—so similar to the sound of her heel on the wood—and then the unmistakable sound of bodies falling. She turned and saw the crumpled heaps of her bodyguards, and, beyond them, the man Number One hated so much holding a silenced pistol. She turned back to the spy. "I guess I should finish the job then."

She slipped her dagger from its place strapped to her thigh, stepped out of her heels and lunged.

24

Bond holstered the Walther and stepped over to the abandoned drinks cart. The ice was melting, but still serviceable enough to make a martini. He scowled at the selection of vodka and gin. Shanti Ernawati clearly didn't know much about alcohol.

He could have killed her. Even now, as she Indira circled and lunged, circled and parried, he had a clear shot. But Indira's had earned this part. This was her closure. Instead, he sipped his drink and watched as the two of them performed their deadly dance before the setting sun, two lethal silhouettes against the scarlet.

25

When it was over they deposited the bodies on a dive boat and bribed the dive-master to dump them someplace far from the popular diving areas and, ideally, teeming with sharks. The leather-skinned old dive master said he knew just the place. Then they went back to the villa they'd booked under the name of one of Indira's covers and spent the rest of the evening together in the voluminous bed.

Indira didn't take the lead this time. Bond, having learned the topography of her body, knew how to bring her to her climax time and time again. Instead she gave herself over to him, surrendered to him in ways that were each more intimate and exciting, and by the time they were done, he owned her sexually as thoroughly as any man could.

She woke from a doze to see him standing by the window tapping his phone.

"Reporting in?" she asked.

"Making flight arrangements," he replied. "I'll report in person. M prefers mission details not be broadcast in any way that can be intercepted."

She nodded. "I think my superiors will want to hear from me as soon as possible."

"The capture-or-kill order had been rescinded," Bond told her. "I just got the flash traffic on my encrypted app. And the news is reporting an emergency round of meetings between the UK, Pakistan, and India. That means that they've been given the evidence on Spectre and they're just performing the necessary dance to explain why diplomatic relations have improved so suddenly." He snapped the phone off and put it down.

"But I'm still done, aren't I?" Indira asked. "With the field work anyway."

"I can't see any way they can send you back out."

She looked at the bed—the white sheets now blue-black in the darkness, and saw the life flowing out of Shanti Ernawati and into the pristine waters below the pier. "I think I've had enough for a lifetime anyway," she sighed. "It's all so exciting, but if I had to do it regularly I don't know what it would do to me." She looked up at Bond, now just a shape against the sliding glass door of the villa, barely given some form by the lights of the fishing boats in the distance. "And you? I suppose there will just be another assignment after this. And another after that?"

He didn't answer, just took a sip of his drink. She waited, not long, but long enough for the fishing boats to drift away and take the light with them, and his outline became indistinguishable from the darkness.


End file.
